Stabroek Market fire…GPL says no compensation for fire victim if report supports GPL findings

Jun 09, 2012 News

In a letter addressed to Mr. Kheedmat Budhu, Special Assistant to the President, the Guyana Power and Light Company has stated that the company would not be offering any compensation to Chandoutie Das.
On Good Friday Das lost in excess of $5M worth of groceries after fire destroyed her Stabroek Market stall. While it has been determined that the fire was electrical in origin the Power Company has stated that it was not as a result of the transformer as was stated in earlier reports. However according to GPL investigators pictures point to an internal fault in the stall that would have precipitated the fire.
According to the letter which was dated May 21 and signed by the Company’s Chief Executive Officer Bharrat Dindyal, “It was reported in the press that Ms. Das complained that the transformer serving her stall was displaying signs of defect and she blamed this for the fire”.
Further “In instances where internal faults exist and it is not clear (by the breaker tripping or fuse rupturing) the source of supply, the GPL transformer fuse is impacted…this can present itself in connections sparking or the transformer fuse rupturing.”
“Where an intermittent fault eventually becomes a permanent fault (breakdown in insulation eventually resulting in a short circuit) the faulted PVC insulation on the circuit would quickly burst into flames as a massive current would be flowing (thousand amps)…this would ignite any combustible material in the vicinity.”
It was also stated in the letter that a GPL crew responding to a complaint that the transformer connection is sparking would not find anything abnormal if the fault is intermittent.
Also as was stated that the Power Company was able to take photographs of the damage to the stall, the power company is of the opinion that the fault was on a supply cord to a freezer.
But Das in an invited comment said she never had any freezer in the premises. The woman said that she believes that the Power Company is just trying to avoid compensating her. Das said that since she has been operating the business, she has never had a freezer as she does not sell items that need to be stored in a freezer.
Ever since the fire the woman took it upon herself to rebuild her stall and restock. All of the bills, she said, have since been submitted to the Power Company.
The woman said she received the letter yesterday when she visited the Office of the President to follow up on a complaint she had lodged there.
She also showed this publication another letter dated May 31, which sought to inform Das that the ‘Claims for damage by fire’ process has been put on hold while the company awaits a report from the fire department.

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Stabroek Market fire…GPL says no compensation for fire victim if report supports GPL findings

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