So the PPP is being vindictive to the Lindeners because of the cut from the GPL budget.

Is GPL the supplier of electricity to the Lindeners? 

The highly subsidized cost for electricity in Linden could not have continued indefinitely, the day has come for them to be integrated into the National Grid, and pay the same tariff for Electricity as the rest of the country.

According to Chris Ram BOSAI generates profits from providing electricity.  If they can do so at lower cost than GPL then clearly Lindeners ought not to pay more.

The question that you ought to ask is why is BOSAI more efficient than GPL and why should Guyanese be forced to pay for their inefficiency.

According to Chris Ram BOSAI supplies Linden.  The PPP is just enraged that they FOR THE SECOND TIME, boasted that they would seize Linden, and this time got totally trounced.

Freedom House screams "we gun teach dem black man a lesson'.

One day the PPP will learn that they lack the power to permanently disenfranchise 40% of the population w/o dire consequences.

All these PPP idiots need to prove to us that Christopher Ram is wrong and BOSAI does not provide electricity at lower cost than GPL.

This speaks volumes of racism vengeance by the PPP.

How much was spent on the white elephant (the Skeldon Plant) that is located in a PPP stronghold?

NO money until they get their mismanagement in order.

The broken system at GPL causes high costs for electricity and the criminalization of those who steal current because they cannot afford it
By Stabroek staff  |  3 Comments  |Letters | Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Dear Editor,

You do the crime, you do the time. That is the simple philosophy that decent society lives by. However, there are crimes and then there are crimes. Some criminals walk scot free in this country while others must pay their societal dues. In 2010, Guyana Power Light (GPL) brought a lot of ‘criminals’ to justice: 205 raids, 10,837 illegal connections removed, 575 arrests and 211 convictions. Up to April 2011, the numbers are 2,145 illegal connection removals, 167 arrests, 10 convictions, 76 raids and 157 pending cases. The year 2011 is on track to match 2010. GPL claims that approximately 30% of the entire Guyana population is thieving electricity. GPL claims estimated losses of $2 billion annually. When 30% of a nation is stealing electricity, it is not an isolated or minuscule problem any more but points to a serious underlying problem.

So what is driving this problem? Simply, this is a crime that largely flows from mismanagement, incompetence, wastage and every other conceivable wrong that saddled this country with a problem of overpriced yet inadequate, inconsistent and poorly distributed electricity. In a nation where taxpayers paid over $100 billion in taxes, where GuySuCo has not paid its GPL bill and where GPL gets it perks from state coffers, GPL is putting Guyanese in court and in jail by the hundreds. At the end of December 2009, GPL had 147,261 customers. About 35% of GPL’s losses come from technical (approx 12%) and non-technical sources (approx 23%). Technical losses drive up the price of electricity. The higher prices in turn contribute to non-technical losses, as unaffordability leads to electricity theft by most of the 30% of consumers.

GPL had 898 employees in 2009. Its projected employment costs for 2010 were $2,367,329,000 or roughly $2,636,223 (US$13,181) per GPL employee per annum. In a country with a per capita GDP of US$1946 in 2010 and with many staving off hunger and battling unflinching poverty, the average GPL employee earned about US$13,181 in 2010, a whopping US$11,235 more than the GDP. It is no wonder that electricity costs $48.42 to $53.78 or US24.21 cents to US26.89 cents per Kwh. In New York, Con Edison customers are paying from US8.5 cents to around US12 cents per Kwh.

So why are Guyanese paying so much more for electricity than New Yorkers when we both pay the same price for a barrel of oil and Guyana pays less for delivery from nearby Venezuela or Trinidad & Tobago, has far lower labour costs and its electricity entity benefits from various government perks? The answer lies in GPL’s failed, broken and decrepit system (management and technical).

What we have is a clear case of the proverbial fattening at GPL while hundreds of poor people are being criminalised and shamed because they refuse to return to the PNC days of darkness. This is the ultimate heist of transferring the liability of a failed system onto an impoverished public and then throwing them in jail when they cannot afford it. While some do steal electricity in this country despite their ability to pay and deserve their time behind bars, many of that 30% of power thieves in Guyana simply cannot afford it. Should this country that squanders money like a drunken sailor in port cast the truly destitute into jail over the theft of a little bit of electricity?

Must those who cannot afford the yoke GPL has placed around their necks due to their atrocious management subject themselves to a life in darkness? Is this the party of Cheddi Jagan who spent many nights in darkness in the Mazaruni prison struggling for the poor people of this nation? Is this the nation we want for our children when we pay $100 billion in taxes from our sweat, blood and tears only to end up in a prison cell because we gave everything in taxes and had nothing left to afford a light bulb for our child to study at night? The cake shop managers in their brilliantly lit mansions by the sea have managed to criminalize another group in this nation of criminality they have created. They are eating their cake and having it too. However, that which is done in darkness will eventually come to light.

Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell

Where in all of this is any denial by PPP supporters that the police murdered Lindeners.

They were all in an orgy celebrating the deaths.

Regardless if they felt the police did their jobs for once, the facts are now coming out at the inquiry. Which is inherently better than the hearsay that we have been bombarded with from the cesspool of a newspaper KN and political opportunists like you. 

Druggie you are pretending a sif this was a shooting in the middle of the night where the police were not present.

The polivce were there, large numbers of them.  If there were sevgeral gun shots that killed three and injured several others, and these were not from where the police were, thaty would have been instantly reported by the police.

Why did it take so long?

Are you claiming that the police are so incompetent that they cant know where shots are coming from, and make an instant effort to catch those people who were responsible?  Why all the energies on the bridge in subsequent days when a greater priority would have been to catch thes emurderers, and in fact if they did som woudl have exonerate dthemselves from blame and put the onus on people who were standing among the protesters.

Druggie the police know the shootings were not justified, and now that they fear that the Inquiry might not be a PPP white wash they are trying to cover their rears.

Indeed the police may be trying to save their skins, but I empathize with them. You have obviously not faced off against a marauding rabid mob of PNC. The men was obviously in fear of their lives  as the mob advanced, even the  seasoned police with shotguns fled. In the melee amid the firing of tear gas and shotgun pellets in the air, it would have been difficult to pay attention to every detail. 

But the few that did hear the shots came forward and were given a voice by the independent inquiry. Those voices would have been silenced by the Kaiteurs and opposition had it not been for the inquiry. 

The inquiry is been carried out by outsiders of whose makeup was agreed upon by the joint opposition, so please cut the crap about white wash. 

Here you go.  What did they have to fear druggie if the protesters were shooting each other.  Not ONE cop[ was shot or injured.

Any way druggie one day when a crowd of Indos get shot you will sing a different tune.

And yes druggie its the very composition of the Inquiry that now have the cops frantically trying to cover their posteriors. So now we are hearing a new version of the events.

Any way druggie proof has been furnished that the cop in charge at Linden was chatting with Rohee BEFORE the shooting started....he lied and said that he wasnt.

Why all these lies druggie?  Why were we not talking about the police attempting to apprehend and arrest those who murdered 3 people and injured many others.  If this is what the police believed that happened on that day then shouldnt that have been the discussion. 

At the time EVERY one, including the PPP believed that the police had shot at the protesters.  Their reaction was to seek to justogfy why it happened.  Not to claim that others were responsible.

Catch some sense man, the protesters were embolden enough to start advancing towards the police who beat a hasty retreat when the attempt to burn the bridge was initiated. The afc/pnc assassins in the crowd chose that moment to shoot their fellow members as sacrifice for a higher cause. The intensity of the moment did not allow for police to discern who was doing the shooting, it was only after the crowd scattered that they realize what had happened. At that moment the culprits had already sneaked out of Linden just like the trouble maker gerhard.