Where is IDB $$M given for line losses?

Jan 14, 2015 News

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– APNU’s Greenidge asks

Opposition member, Carl Greenidge, did not hesitate in a recent interview to roundly criticize Chairman of the Board of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL), Winston Brassington, and Prime Minister Samuel Hinds who has responsibility for the energy sector, as he stated that the company’s admission of its exorbitant losses are products of “downright mismanagement and too much political interference”.

The Shadow Minister of Finance of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) also called on GPL’s management to explain what it did with the millions it received from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to help avoid this situation “which seems to have gotten from bad to worse”.
In an advertisement published in the media, the electricity company said that for the first quarter of 2013, it recorded the highest level of electricity loss and this was in the South Georgetown district. The company emphasized that the areas accounting for the 60 percent losses have some of the largest population densities.
Greenidge said that first of all, GPL’s management and more particularly, the Board, is drawn from too narrow a range of communities in the country. He stressed that recruitment should be based on competence and experience not on political affiliation.
Secondly, he asserted that Brassington in particular has lost the confidence of the country. He opined that the GPL Board Chairman is not competent to do the work to which he is assigned, for “he is wearing too many hats and is involved in so many conflicts of interest that his word on any particular issue is not worth a cent.”
Further, the former Finance Minister said that the GPL losses fiasco is but one of many issues that merits the firing of the Board and senior managers.
Greenidge said that while GPL’s management and Board complain that they are denied enough money to invest in the acquisition and installation of equipment, they have taken some of the funds received from taxpayers to acquire equipment not relevant to their most important problem, the reduction of losses.

The APNU financial point man said that the monies have been used to acquire equipment such as “the fibre optic cable that would help the associates of the former President, Bharrat Jagdeo, displace Digicel and GT&T as suppliers of Information Communication Technology services.”
As regards the technical and commercial losses being suffered by the company, Greenidge asked, “But whatever happened to the US$5M approved by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in 2011 to help reduce electricity losses?”
Greenidge, who served as the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee when the parliament was not prorogued, sought to remind Hinds that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) had provided the funds to help boost the efficiency of the country’s power system through electricity loss reduction measures and improvements in the operation and maintenance of the distribution network.
He said that since 2010, the level of losses in several areas seems to have increased from the 10 and 17% levels at which they then stood.
“As was previously reported to the media by the Prime Minister, the reasons have nothing to do with South Georgetown or the APNU supporters… The PM needs to look at the management of the company, political interference in the application of sanctions against businessmen and PPP supporters and the disciplining of staff involved in corrupt practices.
There is a much publicized case of a GPL manager transferring a staff member for taking action to terminate the manager’s theft of electricity. The high turnover of managers is testimony to this problem and it has affected the implementation of the IDB project,” Greenidge added.

GPL in its paid advertisement had said that it has 5,501 accounts in its system, for the areas which are serviced by Feeder SF5. The area covers Tucville Well, Sophia Well, South Ruimveldt Park east of Penny Lane, Festival City, North Ruimveldt, South Ruimveldt Gardens west of Penny Lane, West Ruimveldt, East Ruimveldt, Roxanne Burnham Gardens, Guyhoc Park and Ebenezer Drive. These districts accounted for GPL’s losses.
Following the area served by Feeder SF5, the next area with high electricity losses includes the East Coast Demerara with losses at 43.9 percent within the Sophia to Coldingen area and 42.2 percent in ‘A’ to ‘E’ Fields in Sophia.
Other areas with high losses include Coldingen to Bygeval with losses said to be at 37.1 percent, North Sophia to Success with losses at 34.4 percent.
The area served by Feeder SF3 which includes parts of Prashad Nagar, Lamaha Gardens, East of Sheriff and South of Dennis Street, Norton Street, Princes Street, Tucville, Meadowbrook, Werk-en-Rust west of John Street, West La Penitence and part of Middle Road with losses pegged at 37.4 percent.
As for those districts with losses in the 30 percent range, GPL said that these include those on Water Street between New Market Street and Avenue of the Republic and Brickdam where losses are at 36.9 percent.
From Edinburgh to Lookout, Parika on the West Demerara, losses are 35.9 percent. In Wakenaam, the losses are 37.2 percent while in Leguan the loss is pegged at 30.7 percent. In Bartica, losses are 32.3 percent. It said that the feeder in contention, SF5, is 60 percent with technical losses at 17.4 percent and non-technical losses at 42.6 percent.
GPL said that this should be compared with the area served by feeder VH-F3 (Vreed-en-Hoop to Windsor Forest) which with 7104 customers – as compared with 5,501 customers – has a total loss of 9.8 percent; 9.6 percent technical and 0.2 percent non-technical.
The power company noted that technical losses reflect those attributed to GPL’s network and non-technical losses are mainly electricity theft.
The total number of customers within the zone of contention (SP5) is 5,501 and losses per customer amount to US$49 or $10,000 per month, GPL said.
On the aforementioned figures, Greenidge sought to remind the public, and Hinds, that a good deal of the losses experienced by the company are not treated as such because they are the result of formal arrangements that allow electricity to be provided to businesses and individual households.
“There have been well known cases involving provision of cheap or free electricity to a prominent restaurant and to companies owned by or connected to high profile private sector representatives,” he asserted.
“Before Hinds and the PPP start stigmatizing sections of the population as having criminal tendencies, based on the GPL experience, they both should have a look at the sociology of crime in Guyana and consult their conscience and the facts on which the main Guyanese communities are involved in fraud and white collar crime, money laundering and drug trafficking in and out of Guyana.
Greenidge said, too, that he regards the comments by Hinds on the need for APNU leaders to call on its supporters to pay their electricity bills as reprehensible, implying as it does that only South Georgetown residents break the law and that they account for the bulk of GPL’s losses.
“But this is merely what one writer has called the ‘visible face of electricity theft’. There is an invisible side to the story. Many PPP areas are illegally receiving free street lighting and street lights account for a significant portion of losses the last time I saw an audit of the known losses. More importantly, there have been cases even of GPL Board members stealing electricity. Indeed, one newspaper report suggested that some of them believe that free electricity is their entitlement,” he added.
Greenidge emphasized that point that needs to be borne in mind is that the PM is being malicious and the attempt to stigmatize one Guyanese community is part of a pattern of misrepresentation and manipulation of information in “their game of ethnic politics.”

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