Senior citizen feels powerless dealing with Guyana Power and Light

Jul 29, 2020 Letters

Dear Editor,

Awakened at 07:30 hours by the familiar hum of a Sophia generator which signals one of GPL’s indifferent power outages in Prashad Nagar, (and wherever else?). Earlier the same week, the blackout had lasted from Tuesday night through to late Wednesday afternoon – just over 20 hours, not to mention others earlier in this month of July.
It is so ludicrous. It is as if the engineers had overheard my ophthalmologist’s advice that I should read with a desk light as close as possible, in order to help my blurred vision. It is as if these engineers had also overheard the optometrist recommending a replacement of my long worn out glasses, since they no longer observe even the spectacular – all this in a season when the day is gloomed with very murky clouds.
I therefore needed help to transcribe this sense of helplessness, which overshadowed the past week, when one is immersed in hygiene issues, in the absence of running water. (There is no help or helper). Mere physical sustenance has become a challenge, and emotions could hardly be relieved through escape to flickering TV offerings. In fact, the one flicker in the encompassing gloom comes from the faithful fifty-year-old oil lamp. It is always ready to snicker at frustrating ‘progress’, for exactly at this point the one panting light bulb gave its last gasp – exactly at 11:00 hrs.
Even GTT’s ‘Blaze’ equipment is making itself heard, as if also in protest. But I dare not interfere with technology in which I have no competence, and just possibly no confidence. I would not wish to get my fingers burnt. No one else is here. Hopefully, there would be no flare up.
In desperation, I dial the anachronism of Power and Light, only to be greeted by a human voice that robotically welcomes an ‘important customer’, asked to wait on ‘busy representatives’ who will eventually get to ‘you’ in three, five, fifteen, and then more minutes, and would refer the ‘important’ matter to another ‘robot’ who, eventually in anticipation of ‘your’ complaint, adds that it would be addressed ‘as early as possible’ – all of which means: ‘just bare your chafe’.
But like the last bill which is replete with just numbers (no mention of aforementioned life’s inconveniences); the next would not reflect any absences of power and light. For inherent in their power is not to provide light. The cost is deliberately, unfairly the same as ever, regardless of how ‘important’ the technology says you are to this powerlessness.
The sad fact is that the innocent recruit who is utilised to repeat those flatulent messages, is much too young to have any substantive appreciation of how human is the condition of the particular complainant, and indeed how critical the glib reference to meaningless waiting time for a response can be to a truly desperate ‘important’ complainant.
Their employers, bemused with their own sophistication, scarcely relate to their communicators the required sense of responsibility to interpret and analyse the urgency and gravity of any specific human situation.
There is simply no sense of accountability that is identifiable. How human then are the directorate, management, and senior operatives who in any case must be inundated with a persistent range of regular ‘nuisances’, so many not vocalised publicly. It is therefore on their behalf that this submission is made – by a very senior single discomfited resident.
Yours truly,
E.B. John

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Senior citizen feels powerless dealing with Guyana Power and Light

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