$5 per kWh is unacceptable!

Jul 03, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

My average monthly consumption of electricity is around 300 units per month. This means that at a rate of $52 per kilowatt hour (kWh), I pay around $15,000 to $16,000 per month.

And despite this, the government tells me that it is actually subsidizing my current. Yet, it does not tell me by how much.

However, in the case of Linden, we are told that this subsidy amounts to some $250,000 per year for each household. Yes, this is what the government says.

My annual cumulative electricity bill does not reach that sum, so it boggles my mind that one small community should have such an astronomical per capita subsidy.

If this is indeed the case, I call for some explanation as to how such a situation could have been allowed to develop.

It would amount to reckless governance for any government to be subsidizing electricity to Linden on a per capita basis at such a high rate.

I feel abused that one area could be enjoying such a humongous subsidy on electricity while the rest of Guyana has to pay a tariff of close to ten times what is paid by Lindeners.

To illustrate the point, a person in Linden using the same amount of electricity as I do pays only $1,500 per month. Households in Linden are paying $5 per kWh while households in the rest of Guyana are paying $52 per kWh.

Because of the un-sustainability of the situation the government has had to take a decision to increase tariffs, a decision which sparked protests in the former mining town.

Linden was shut down for one day after the government said that tariffs have to be increased. Yet under the new proposal some 100 KW will be charged at the old rate of $5 per kWh with the remainder paying the national tariff.

For the rest of the country you pay one rate for all the electricity you use and therefore I cannot see why the government is asking the consumers outside of Linden to pay one rate and yet is offering Lindeners a double subsidy, first on the first 100 KW for which they will pay only $500 while the rest of the country pays $5,200; and then on the national subsidized rate of $52 per kWh.

Why should the people of Linden enjoy such concessions that are not enjoyed by the rest of the country?
The AFC has tried to make a case out for not increasing tariffs by arguing that during the heyday of bauxite, Linden helped out the rest of the country.

May I ask how they did this? I know that those profits were used to give the people of Linden free electricity and often you would see lights burning day and night in some homes. It was also used to garnish a managerial bureaucracy.

I never heard of any bauxite levy being imposed on the industry and therefore I would ask the Alliance For Change to expand on for how long and by how much did the people of Linden support the Guyanese people. That party made the point and therefore should defend it.

I am not opposed to the people of Linden gaining a subsidy on electricity. I am however saying that this subsidy cannot be disproportionate to the national subsidy.

Secondly, I am saying that no community should be asked to pay more than the cost of generating electricity in that community.

If Linden can generate electricity without all the inefficiencies, technical and line losses that plague the rest of the national grid, I do not see why the people should not pay an economic cost even if that cost is lower than the average national tariff.

Therefore if it is established that the Linden power company can generate electricity for less than $52 per kWh, then the people of Linden are entitled to a reduced cost less whatever is the national subsidy.

Similarly, if electricity can be produced in Berbice at around $30 per kWh, then the people of that region should be entitled to a reduction through the payment of an economic cost.

This is the principle which I hope the government will hold firmly to in its discussions about an appropriate tariff for the people of Linden.

I do not expect anything to happen until after CARIFESTA but in the intermission, I hope that the correct calculations would be used to ensure that everyone, Linden included, pays an economic cost for electricity consumed.