Upper Corentyne residents still can’t enjoy a reliable supply of electricity
Dear Editor,
Last week, we suffered over 10 hours of blackout on Monday, two-and-a-half hours of blackout on Tuesday, and over ten hours of blackout on Friday, for a total of more than 20 hours of blackout in a week!
It was also impossible to get through to GPL’s hotline at 333-2186 to find out when power would be restored. I tried for several hours to get through to this number, to no avail. Either the workers there are using this line for personal use, or they are not hanging up the phone because they do not want to answer phone calls.
This situation is unacceptable, and is insulting to hardworking residents and businessmen who suffer significant financial losses, as well as emotional distress at the total disrespect and the uncaring attitude demonstrated to us by GPL and its staff.
To add insult to injury, Kaieteur News reported that it would take at least four weeks for the power supply to improve, but that is of little hope to us, because GPL has never offered a reliable supply of power to the Upper Corentyne area.
I challenge Mr. Bharat Dindiyal and Mr. Ayube Bacchus to state whether, in the last year, there was ever a one-month period where a reliable supply of power was provided to the Upper Corentyne.
GPL has constantly been making promises, but they have never kept them.
Around July this year, Mr. Bacchus promised that our electricity supply would improve, and guess what, it has, on the contrary, significantly deteriorated. There is no evidence that GPL has the desire, the skills, or the management team needed to urgently fix this situation.
While this should be a troubling situation that draws the attention of GPL’s management, as well as the PPP/C leaders, no one is paying attention to the plight of our area because, apparently, they are all rich enough to have their own power generators and back-up supply, so they are not affected by blackouts like the ordinary citizens of this area.
What do we have to do for GPL to get its act together and stop making lame excuses, and provide us with dependable supply of electricity?
Talk to anyone in this area and they will tell you they are fed-up. Our children’s studies are being affected, our food is spoiling, our businesses cannot perform. Life cannot continue like this for four more weeks or God knows how long it will take for GPL to fix the power supply.
To put things into context, GPL should look to New York and New Jersey, where reliable power is already being restored to large sections of the population – mere days are the horrible destruction of Hurricane Sandy. Or it can look right here at home, at GT&T, which inherited an absolute mess in the early 1990s and completely transformed and revolutionized the communications sector in Guyana. So don’t tell us about how we have to wait for four weeks for a promised improvement when the problems we face aren’t caused by devastating natural disasters, or financial bankruptcy, but by a devastatingly incompetent management team at GPL, that is bankrupt of ideas to fix our electricity sector.
After twenty years of PPP/C rule, it is time that this party takes action and immediately fixes our electricity supply on the Upper Corentyne. Don’t take us for granted.
Pradeep Singh