Oil Rich Guyana Left in the Dark

There is no justification for a nation producing oil and gas and ranked among the wealthiest per capita in the world to endure frequent and crippling blackouts. Yet for Guyanese, this has become a near daily reality. As Christmas approaches, homes are plunged into darkness, electrical appliances are destroyed, and frustration has reached a boiling point.

The People’s Progressive Party Civic government has failed spectacularly on electricity, despite inheriting an improving and coherent energy plan from the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) coalition administration. That framework, advanced under former Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson, had begun stabilising generation and strengthening maintenance. Rather than build on that progress, the PPP chose to dismantle it, not because it was ineffective, but because it originated from political opponents.

This destructive instinct has become a defining feature of the PPP’s governance. Systems inherited from the coalition government and earlier People’s National Congress administrations are routinely torn down out of spite and narrow minded politics. The result is not innovation, but institutional decay, with citizens left to bear the consequences.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the electricity sector. Workers and businesses who depend on the national grid to get their work done are being hamstrung daily. Productivity is disrupted, deadlines are missed, incomes are lost, and livelihoods are threatened. Many have been forced to confront a bitter reality that the only certainty they can expect from this government is that it will not deliver.

The blackouts are not merely an inconvenience. Voltage fluctuations and sudden outages are destroying refrigerators, televisions, fans and computers, wiping out household savings in a struggling economy. Small businesses are especially vulnerable, unable to absorb the cost of damaged equipment or alternative power sources.

The situation is unacceptable and untenable. Guyana does not lack resources. Oil revenues are flowing, and the state boasts of unprecedented wealth. What is missing is competent management and the political maturity to preserve and improve what works.

If the Ali administration cannot stabilise the electricity supply immediately, it must put national interest above political pride. The energy framework implemented under David Patterson should be revisited and used, even on an interim basis, until a reliable system is restored. Pride cannot keep the lights on.

This is Christmas. Guyanese have had enough of excuses, darkness and broken appliances. Electricity is a basic service and a fundamental test of governance. On that test, the PPP Civic government is failing, leaving an oil rich nation in the dark and a population losing faith in a government that has repeatedly shown it cannot be trusted to deliver.