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PUC hears GPL estimates 20% of customer bills
…12,000 prepaid meters issued in 2011
The state-owned, Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL), has testified to
GPL’s officials testifying before the Public Utilities Commission on Monday.
estimating about 20 per cent of the bills to consumers in 2011.
This 82.5 per cent was way off base of the 90 per cent target set by authorities, GPL officials told the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on Monday during a mandatory public hearing.
PUC is the regulatory body tasked with monitoring utility companies in Guyana, including GPL, the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company, Digicel and Guyana Water Inc.
Monday’s hearing was to review the performance targets which had been established for GPL.
The power company’s executives, during the hearing at Tower Hotel, Main Street, admitted that the company’s monthly meter reading exercises, continue to be plagued by closed gates, refused access, and working homeowners.
This was especially true for the Diamond/Grove area and other new housing schemes.
The 20 per cent estimated bills would also include cases where meters numbers differ from what GPL has on records.
The GPL team included Chief Executive Officer, Bharat Dindyal; his deputy, Ash Deonarine, and other senior officials of the company disclosed that meter readers have even gone as far as leaving cards for the consumers but even this strategy has failed to work.
During a fiery session of questions on a range of issues including prepaid metering, loss reduction, voltage problems and new applications, GPL also disclosed that it recorded success in issuing prepaid metering with 12,000 of these installed last year as against the 3,000 in 2010.
GPL has ceased publishing the schedule of meter reading because of security fears.
In the past, there have been incidents of bandits posing as meter readers.
Questioned on why there was a high incidence of estimations for the maximum demand consumers (large businesses), the GPL officials explained that the hand-held terminals used to read the meters were proving a problem and the company is in the process of addressing this issue.
Responding to questions as to why consumers would not see much difference on their bills despite suffering blackouts, the utility’s CEO insisted that the outages are reflected on the bill but because it may be a matter of a few hundred dollars, consumers may not immediately notice the difference.
On a monthly average, GPL earned in 2011 around $55M from the prepaid meters as against the $2.2B earned each month from the 147,000-plus post paid consumers.
Following Monday’s hearings of GPL’s performance, PUC will take a month to decide whether it will sanction the company for not meeting its targets.
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