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By Nicole Telford- Former Minister under the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) coalition government and Member of Parliament(MP) David Patterson said the Peoples Progressive/ Civic (PPP/C) government is incompetent. “For starters the PPP tried to close the barn door when the horse has bolted.”
The MP’s comments come in wake of ongoing power outages and President Irfaan Ali’s statement that the government will be seeking to remove large companies from Guyana’s power grid to reduce the power outages.
During an interview with Village Voice News, Patterson said the question of power demand has been around for quite a while and if the government fails to keep abreast with the situation they will run into shortage.
Going further, the former Minister of Public Infrastructure noted “the PPP is not shy at holding lavish opening ceremonies, giving themselves kudos for big businesses and people opening malls, hospitals, car dealerships, hotels or whatever, they always have a minister there and every time he opens an event they wax lyrically, or he or she wax lyrically about the confidence in the government and their policies.” He sees this as all bluster, noting, “if these new businesses have been opened up and they are going on the grid, obviously the need for power increases.”
The MP shared that the PPP has done absolutely nothing in the last three years to improve power supply. According to him, “if these businesses can self-generate then it is incumbent on the government to subsidize them rather than penalize them for something the government has done.”
Noting that fuel is zero-rated, the shadow said they can offer a subsidy so that businesses that self-generate can stay off the grid permanently, “rather than us having the fairy lights issue we are having now.”
The sad reality for folks in the country, he pointed out, is that we would be experiencing blackouts ‘distribution frequency management’ until January 2024. This he noted is because of the containerized sets that the government is now purchasing, what he called, used sets from Honduras.
Expressing consternation at the situation, Patterson pointed out that in “the fastest growing economy in the world, ‘little Dubai’ is buying second and third hand sets from Honduras.”
Containerized sets not meant to power a national grid
Patterson advised the containerized sets were not meant to power a national grid, they were meant to power work sites or remote areas building infrastructure. And the ones the government are sourcing are “sets that have been mothballed and they are no longer using them, so they are stored in a scrap heap, and they try to find some third world or war torn country to sell them to.”
With sarcasm the MP added, “here comes along the PPP the fastest growing economy in the world and buys these old generating sets” Patterson said “it would be interesting to know how they knew about these sets as he stated “this is one of those su-gate issue, a fella figure out we are short on power, walking pass a scrap yard in Honduras and said hey! here is the situation Vice President and President Ali, I will bring in these containerized sets for you and they then go on the air and they make people feel good as if they are doing us a favor but this is not a favor.”
Patterson, outlined under the coalition (APNU+AFC) government, where he was minister of public infrastructure, they brought in new generating sets of 48 megawatts that have kept us going for the last three years. He informed the APNU+AFC Government had tendered out for another 30 megawatts that was supposed to be here in September of 2020. According to him it takes a year from purchase to installation so the sets purchased in 2020 would have completed installation by 2022.
Patterson said when the PPP entered government in August 2020 they scrapped what the coalition government did. He said “the old units are rusty and they are probably spraying them at sea in bright yellow and the public would believe they are new sets, but when opened they are all old sets and they are inefficient.” Speaking to the issue from experience, the former minister said in 2015 the coalition rented generating sets similar to the sets being procured from Caterpillar.
He pointed out the coalition got rid of them given the maintenance, “they work with gasoline or diesel but because of the speed at which the turbine turns they were not fuel efficient.” These sets he said were used in Anna Regina and Bartica and Leguan but the coalition got rid of them because they were just leaking money and not cost efficient.
