Blackouts continue to bombard Berbicians
The blackouts which have been bombarding the Berbice area have come under heavy criticisms across the Region 6 area.
The area has been under a blackout ‘fever’ over the past couple of weeks with no end in sight. Most of the outages last just over an hour and occur during the peak period— the evening periods sending residents scampering for lamps and generators.
Already to date, there have been 192 blackouts for the year; compared to 117 during the same period last year.
Regional Chairman of Region 6, David Armogan said that he is not “100 per cent satisfied”. “Over the last couple of mornings, we have seen that the quality of service is not up to what people expect in Berbice and ….GPL needs to improve quality of service”.
Armogan added that despite the current blackout situation, things have improved from years gone by “tremendously but we need to up our standards …we have too many short duration of blackouts and its causing great inconveniences.”
Armogan added, too, that he hopes the company can get their act together and “get it right”. When asked whether GPL hasn’t had enough chances to “get it right”, Armogan noted that “every time they [GPL] come to us and they say ‘we gonna get it right by next month’, the same situation comes up, so despite the fact that we have had so many promises, I don’t think the kind of improvements that we have had have matched the level of promises.”
Meanwhile, the blackouts and power fluctuations have been wrecking havoc at the county’s lone university campus. Director of University of Guyana Berbice Campus, Professor Daizal Samad has reported that air conditioners have gone bad at the campus, and student experiments have suffered a lot due to the spate of power outages.
He said that argument that we are better off in terms of electricity supply than years ago does not fit well. “Where we are now in terms of technological advancements is not where we were decades ago, so that excuse holds little water”.
Efforts to contact GPL’s area manager, Ayube Bacchus proved futile.