GEORGETOWN, Guyana, (CMC) - Amid growing concerns by the Government and labour movement about the large number of electricity outages, the Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL) yesterday said there was no quick fix to the company's problems.
The reaction by the power company came as the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) was preparing to stage a demonstration outside the main office of the power company.
"Apart from the Wartsila power plants, there has been no significant investment in electricity in many, many years and it is difficult to reverse the legacy of maintenance and lack of investment in the brief period of two years," Chief Operations Officer (COO) of the GPL, Paschal Buckley, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).
Just prior to the divestment of the then state-run Guyana Electricity Corporation (GEC) to the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC), The Government bought Wartsila power plants for power generation stations in Demerara and Essequibo.
"If they (critics) look at the power company, they will see that the company performed well in two years," said Buckley, one of the managers employed under the management contract with the Electricity Supply Board of Ireland (ESBI).
Buckley's comments followed repeated criticisms of GPL by the Guyana Government against the backdrop of public complaints about prolonged power outages.
Following this week's Cabinet meeting, Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon said the unsatisfactory performance of the company was a "source of grave frustration and annoyance" to the Government.
"The entire swath of the coast is in blackout-repetitive, interminable - and I believe that more than anything else, this is what has maintained a high dose of scepticism at the level of Cabinet about the ability of this firm to discharge its contractual obligations and to respond to the needs of the Guyanese people," Luncheon said.
The GPL's Chief Operations Officer, however, explained that some areas faced prolonged periods of blackouts because technicians did thorough repairs and maintenance whenever a fault developed.
"I would ask consumers to be patient with us and give us some time as our plans are well developed.... It would not be two years before we see significant changes across a broad sector," Buckley added.
Immediate plans on the drawing board are the renting of temporary generators in at least another six months as well as a US$130 million project to be financed by loans, equity, and internally generated funds.
Currently, management is fine-tuning arrangements to build a new generating system at a cost of US$30 million by 2004, and spending an additional US$20 million on transmission and distribution.
The GPL has already embarked on linking and renewing links among the several power generation stations in Demerara and Berbice.
GPL has an installed capacity of 131 megawatts but due to various defects actual output is 94 megawatts even as the load-demand for power has grown by six per cent over the next two years. The power company projects an output of 180 megawatts in another three years.
GTUC General Secretary Lincoln Lewis has criticized the Government for the electricity woes of Guyanese, saying that the GPL deal "emerged out of an incompetently negotiated privatisation/re-capitalisation agreement that has back-fired spectacularly."
"We strongly recommend to Government that they consider the volatility of our society born out of poverty and frustration and revisit the entire GPL deal before the workers and the people decide to revisit that deal for themselves," Lewis said.