What New Year’s madness is this?
Attorney Kamal Ramkarran has published a letter of protest against GPL (and by extension, the Government of Guyana). When there are justifications for denouncing unfair treatment of the citizens of this land by their government, unless we join in, then the creeping stages of dictatorship begin. This columnist is joining Mr. Ramkarran and he is urging others to do so. I would like to see a justification from the APNU+AFC Government on this New Year’s insanity.
Just before 2015 was about to pass into history, GPL made an announcement that ushers a change of policy. When you are disconnected, to be reconnected, you have to pay off every cent of your arrears.
The reconnection fee has gone up to $3,200. Then as a requirement to have your electricity supply returned, you have to deposit six months of your normal bill in advance. Meaning then that if your average bill is $10,000, then to get back lights, you have to advance GPL, $60,000. As Attorney Ramkarran puts it: how can the poor can comply with this?
This descent into social sadism is coming from one of the most incompetent companies on Planet Earth. Now mind you; not utility company, but company in the general business sense of the word. If you take a poll of disliked entities in Guyana, only the police force would beat out GPL. It is not that GPL is incompetent; it is also an agency that operates without a human face. If ever a company cannot perform and has not been performing, it is GPL under past and current governments, whether it was the regime of Burnham, Hoyte, Jagan, Jagdeo and now the APNU-AFC.
How can this hopeless, failed machine muster the temerity to tell the Guyanese people that they have to pay six months in advance when their supply is disconnected in order to get back lights? I am not a lawyer, but Mr. Ramkarran has suggested this internecine imposition may be illegal. When I read the GPL’s notice in the papers, I immediately said, “Look who is talking?”
This is a utility service that turns up hours after you call them about a sparking wire. Let me be bold and call my wife as a witness. I would not cite my wife in a situation where I am lying. We in our neighbourhood called GPL about a sparking wire. The crew came one day after. We were so worried that hours after the sparks began to fly we used other avenues to fix the problem. When the crew came the next day, we were all laughing.
If ever there is a reason to use the word asinine, it is this new policy of GPL. Surely, the database would show that there are customers who for over thirty, forty years did not default on their monthly payments. Now if because of holiday or illness or busy schedule, you are disconnected, it is unconscionable to ask such a loyal customer to pay six months billing in advance. I fall into the category where for over thirty years I never missed a payment. My wife is unusually meticulous when it comes to these things. Yet I almost got cut off last month.
Did you notice that the advertisement never mentioned a time frame for restoring your electricity when you are cut? They will come a week after. Here is something about GPL, I only published once in these columns. I send my column around midnight to Adam Harris because terrible, emotionally horrible experiences with GPL have taught me to do just that. You see, many times I waited until afternoon hours before I contacted Kaieteur News because I wanted to see how the day unfolded. But countless times, when it reached 5 pm, blackouts would come and I could not type the column. Unless I rushed to someone’s home, I would be without a column.
To deal with GPL’s insanity, I normally send my column around midnight. I live at Turkeyen, next to the Caricom Secretariat, and please believe me when I say we get blackouts almost daily. Many times they last for over four hours.
I will analyze in a forthcoming column, this new policy of GPL and the Government’s acceptance of it using the brilliant theory of the Pakistani political theorist, Hamza Alavi. He produced a theory to explain authoritarian culture in the Third World after the colonials left.
His focus is on what he calls the “over-developed state.” It is a brilliant concept that explains the failure of Guyana since Independence and why Guyana will continue to fail unless Nietzsche’s Übermensch comes to this land.