Opposition has just discovered the importance of GPL

Feb 05, 2017 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

---

No government anywhere should ask its citizens to get used to power outages, none in this 21st Century that has modernization and a green economy at the top of its agenda.
Our Ministers have given their assurance that the quality and reliability of electricity is improving steadily, and that they are extending the possibilities for alternative renewable sources.
At least five Ministers addressed the Honorable House last week and reminded members of the circumstances that Guyanese had lived with throughout the two decades before 2015. There was a debate on the opposition’s motion that called on the government to inform them of “the causes of frequent widespread and unscheduled power outages”. The motion called for a revelation of our medium to long term strategy for the energy sector.
Amazing! This is worse than Rip Van Winkle, but Minister of Business, Dominic Gaskin, said it more succinctly: “The dark days are over, the dark nights will soon be over, and I will not support this motion!”
The work that this administration has done in 19 months to stabilize power supply already shapes Guyana’s forward march to power stability and alternative sources of renewable energy. The PPP needed reminding that in 2015, we inherited mostly old and some ancient generating equipment, especially in Bartica and Anna Regina.
For decades under the PPP’s hand, Guyanese were forced to live with unaffordable charges for a mostly unreliable supply of electricity. Many communities had no power; some had infrequent power supply and among them some residents who could afford their own portable generators supplied power to their neighbours for a fee. Almost every business owner was forced to purchase generators, fuel and spare parts, and implement expensive systems to ensure efficient consumption.
So now that Guyana is advancing on a green pathway to real growth, and now that we have committed ourselves to green energy, up pops this Parliamentary motion demanding all kinds of long-term and medium term strategies to deal with power outages. In 23 years, the PPP never once produced any lasting strategies to provide a steady power supply that could encourage worthwhile investors to bring their operations to Guyana.
So, has the opposition just discovered the importance of GPL?
Minister Gaskin said, “While the rest of us were struggling with our candles and kerosene lamps well into the new millennium, and well into the PPP/C’s administration, these concerns should have been addressed. Perhaps if they cared, all of these long term and medium term strategies they are asking for would have been formulated since then”.
The fact is GPL has embraced our 19-month-old vision for green energy and the company is creating a commercial and technical framework to purchase or transfer electricity from other producers, and from renewable sources like water and the sun.
Bartica and Anna Regina have come to the forefront. These communities have been in the spotlight because their power supplies were badly interrupted due to old generating equipment. Supply to Regions 3 and 4 was also interrupted frequently in the fourth quarter of 2016, until the damage was discovered on the sub-river transmission cable linking the Kingston and Versailles stations.
Minister David Patterson in Parliament pointed out that the don’t-care authors of this parliamentary motion had no plans whatsoever for Regions 2, 3 and 7 when they were in office, but for obvious reasons they have developed a sudden interest in GPL now, in the run-up to the new developments – positive changes.
That damaged submarine cable across the Demerara is being replaced; at Bartica a 1.7 megawatts genset is coming, as well as new engines for Anna Regina, to replace the ancient machines. There is a lot more in the pipeline at GPL, including replacing the old power lines (distribution network), upgrading the billing and customer response systems, and purchasing excess power from large scale self generating (fmr) customers.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Guyanese have been living with blackouts – lengthy ones, short ones, day and night – since the early 1980’s, since GPL was GEC. In Guyana’s history there have been some brief forays into/experimentation with hydroelectricity, but now this government is deliberately going in this direction towards the Green Economy that Guyana will become.
Several feasibility studies had been done in the past, the first at Tumatumari on the Potaro River, others in the Mazaruni, Kaieteur and other waterfalls in that part of the country. In the 1950’s before we gained independence, a small hydropower plant was built by the British Guiana Consolidated Goldfields company to power a gold mining operation, but a workers’ strike closed it in the 1960’s.
The Guyana National Service revived this hydro station in 1976 and kept it running through the 1980’s until the last 750 kW turbine failed around 1989. Tumatumari had provided electricity to a few communities in Region 8. After 1989, the residents reverted to flambeaux, candles, gas lamps, and more recently inverter batteries and small generators.
The quality of life of Guyanese living inland over the two-plus decades of PPP rule did not change or develop. There was one attempt to power the border town of Lethem with the small ill-fated Moco-Moco hydro plant that the Chinese had built in 1995. Eight years later, in 2003, it was gone, victim of a landslide. That was 12 years before the 2015 elections. No matter how the people begged, nothing was done to rehabilitate or replace the hydro station.
Then there was the PPP’s flirtation with the Amaila Falls Hydropower project (2006). Were it not for their venality; the spiraling infrastructural costs; the poorly disguised intent to pry money from our international partners who were depending on lush Guyana to help save the world from the ravages of global warming; and were it not for the long time it took Jagdeo’s friend, ‘Fip’ Motilall to construct the first access road, then we would have had our first Hydropower station ready to go. They did say it was going to take 10 years to come into operation.
Now this government has started over in pursuit of our green agenda with feasibility studies at Amaila Falls and the other locations identified for secondary hydro stations.
We are determined to free Guyanese from decades of blackouts, from underdevelopment, and from our tarnished international image. We just wish that the Opposition would accept that Guyanese people are not that gullible. This self-righteous posturing about long term strategies to fix the holes that the PPP dug will only fool a few.

---

---