Surely GPL is not paying for this damaged submarine cable

Aug 07, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In all the hustle and bustle of the news…cricket and the Rio games… one thing that has continued to keep us in the dark ages has somehow slipped us by last week.
Yes, I am talking about the blackouts and the continued lack of capacity of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) to manage a critical utility.It has become all too clear, with recent developments, that all is not well and above board at GPL.
It appears that President David Granger and the Cabinet and the responsible minister seem not be paying too much attention to the electricity. I do believe, to be fair, that the President has not been briefed enough and it is time, for the good of this country, that GPL be handled. The people are becoming more than fed up. Take for example the breakdown of the power submarine cable that was laid across the Demerara.
It was GPL after an embarrassing late night shutdown back in July which reported that the cable which links the city to West Demerara went down after faulty connection at Kingston. It was not until your newspaper reported last week that the real truth was because of damage to the cable from dredging.
It would appear that had it not been your report the truth would have been buried. We have a situation now that the Chinese contractor of the cable, China National Machinery Import & Export Corporation (CMC), blaming dredging and not poor work for the damage.
According to CMC, the Guyana Power and Light and the Supervisors for the project have signed off on their work hence it is not liable for the current problems affecting the submarine cable.
At the moment, GPL is suffering financial losses as it can no longer use the full potential of the Vreed-en-Hoop Wartsila power plant which is the cheapest source of generation in GPL today.
This means that GPL Customers are exposed to increased blackouts due to the inability of GPL to use the Vreed- en-Hoop plant. Questions are being asked as to who is to be blamed for this costly incident. CMC on its part is putting the blame solely on the dredging company, GPL and CEMCO, the supervisor who oversaw their work.
However, the truth of the matter is that the supervisors have raised several concerns during the laying of the cable by CMC. One such concern pertained to the splicing of the cable which was done at the Kingstown Power station end instead of using one length of cable which was expected in the contract.
Also of concern was the dragging of the cable by other ocean going vessels during construction as well the exposure of the cables due to soil erosion. It was reported that the Chinese company did not use an armoured cable as stipulated in the contract.
Questions are also being asked as to if the 3 meters required for the burial of the cable was undertaken from the hard level of the seabed or was measured from the sling mud.
If it was measured from the top soil or sling mud it therefore means that every time the river will be dredged the cables will be exposed or burst. It is important that MARAD or GPL quickly respond and investigate the level this cable is buried in.
The second question is who to be blamed now for the damage to the submarine cable. Any dredging requires MARAD’s approval and supervision. Government would be the party that hired the dredging firm. The navigation maps would have been marked to show where the submarine cable is. Either MARAD failed to manage the operation or the dredging company was negligent.
Given this costly incident, it will be interesting to know who pays for the cost of fixing the cable.  Should GPL hold MARAD, the dredging company or CMC responsible?
GPL consumers, however, should not have to foot the bill. GPL and MARAD and the Minister of Infrastructure should all quickly explain who is responsible and who will pay. The cable needs to be fixed urgently. GPL should explain who will fix the cable, the costs and the time to have this fixed. In the meanwhile, consumers may need to prepare themselves for increased blackouts.
The PUC may also want to investigate this matter. Answers to this incident should be forthcoming urgently especially since the Chinese company has proudly indicated that they are tipped for the EU-IDB-GPL transmission line project, even though the evaluation has not been completed.
Given that the substation has reportedly encountered numerous problems since its handing over and during its construction and even though they are the third lowest bidder with a bidding price that is over 1 billion dollars over the engineers estimate and the lowest bidder, CMC seems to be very confident of being awarded the contract for the IDB-GPL contract.
Recently Minister of State, Joseph Harmon has rightly indicated that contractors who have not performed on their contracts should not easily qualify for other work of a similar nature. It is left to be seen if CMC has still managed to convince the EU-IDB-GPL and government of Guyana of their readiness for this important project given their problems before and their high price.
Anti Corruption Activist

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