A must see movie — ‘The return of blackout’

Oct 31, 2010 Features / Columnists, My Column

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By Adam Harris

Sometimes people come up with thoughts and ideas or they make comments that set others to thinking about the reality of some situations. I happened to be talking to Glenn Lall about the way forward for the newspaper when the power went. Like me, he became angry. Unlike me, he lashed out at the direction in which the country is heading.
“This is eye pass. The government has no respect for us,” he exclaimed.
He is already peeved at the over-priced contracts and the shoddy work that some people produce despite collecting the kind of money that would transform some communities. So there we were sitting with Glenn fuming and me simply listening.
Then he said something that fashioned this column and set me thinking. “Adam, after air, food and shelter, the next most important thing is electricity.” I travelled back to the days when most of Guyana was without electricity and people thought nothing of that. Of course, there were no blackouts and people like me did school work by lamp light and candlelight.
However, a lot changed since then. Electricity became commonplace. I remember the time when electricity was introduced to Beterverwagting. The year was 1965. When the switch was thrown people basked in the glow. I recall the villagers walking around looking at the homes lit with electricity and commenting how nice they looked.
I also recall people throwing out their lamps, especially gas lamps that had served them so well. One week later a blackout visited them and there was a mad scramble in the rubbish heaps for those very gas lamps that had been discarded so unceremoniously.
Industries remodeled their production line to accommodate electricity and the large generators that powered some homes became silent. Some businesses expanded their operations and Guyana was on the move in the right direction. There were smiles around.
Something went horribly wrong because suddenly the generators came back into operation. The electricity that brought so many smiles was fading. I still recall the days when there was a mere eight megawatts in the system, when there was no water in the pipelines and people trekked long distances to access water, when even the state provided tanks along roadways for people to get water.
People bought newspapers to see when they could rely on power. That section of the newspaper was known as the load shedding guide. Imagine providing people with an important resource was called load shedding.
Things improved slightly with the arrival of imported generators and for whatever reason the government ensured that at Christmas there were lights. And people really used the power because traditionally, that was one time of the year when we usually make ourselves happy. Electricity was important.
Last year, Guyana Power and Light proudly announced that blackout would be a thing of the past and indeed it should. One of the first words my 24-year-old daughter uttered was blackout.
GPL installed a monstrous generating system and I was happy. I had lived to see the day when blackout was banished. I heard the power company talk about surplus capacity and things like that. Even Prime Minister Sam Hinds was like a little boy at Christmas time with a toy that he desired. He was exuberant. The PPP government had buried blackout, he said.
Lo and behold, I have come to realise that blackout must be the legendary phoenix. It has arisen bigger and more powerful than before. It hits me every day for hours, sometimes in the midst of something interesting. There are no excuses or warnings; just a simple disappearance of power heralded by the silence that descends on communities.
This must be the sequel to a horror movie ‘The return of blackout’
At nights, when the power returns before nine there are the hundreds of little voices shouting “Lights” in the same way I used to shout “Hooray” at rallies and at birthday parties. In this day and age this should not be. Now I hear President Bharrat Jagdeo talking about spending a further US$20 million to end Guyana’s power woes. What happened to the promise made last year when it was said that we would now have surplus power?
Then I realised that we had paid Makeshwar Fip Motilall US$15.4 million to construct a road to the Amaila Falls hydro project. That too is supposed to end all blackouts. And I hear about another sum of money for electricity.
Something has to be horribly wrong. Perhaps the programme planners simply do not know what Guyana’s energy needs are. Perhaps we have paid money in all good faith but someone has taken the money and run, leaving us no better than we were before.
Friday night was a case in point. There was this horrific minibus collision on the Corentyne. The reporter was tasked with getting the story and photographs to me. He couldn’t because the power went and New Amsterdam and Canje were without power until midnight. That we got the story and photographs is testimony to how hard some reporters work to get the news to the readers.
On Wednesday a blackout shut down the operations at Customs House. Importers had to sit around for hours because no one could do any work. That was a waste of time and money. Perhaps Customs House believed GPL and discarded its generators that once made so much noise in the Tiger Bay neighbourhood.
Many companies, though, have resorted to what they call self-generation. I know that Banks DIH, Demerara Distillers Limited and a few other companies have installed their own power supply, opting to ignore GPL all together because of the unreliability and the cost.
Someone at Banks DIH once told me that whenever there was a blackout the quality of the beer was severely affected. At one time way back when, no two beers tasted alike.
I am at a loss and I will try to get answers to the burning question of why did blackout return. Perhaps it got deported like so many other Guyanese. Perhaps it merely took a holiday.

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