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Govt. turns to Cuba for engineers to ease blackout woes
President Irfaan Ali
Kaieteur News – The Government of Guyana has turned to the Republic of Cuba to source engineers to boost the Guyana Power and Light’s (GPL) technical capacity and ultimately help ease the country’s power woes.
This was announced by President Irfaan Ali on Friday night during a live broadcast published on Facebook to address the challenges the Power Company is experiencing. The Head of State said that he has engaged Cuban Ambassador to Guyana, Jorge Francisco Luis on the subject of importing Cuban engineers.
He said that the recruitment of Cuban engineers is one method of addressing the challenges that face the power company.
He noted that in addition to the numerous power outages coming from GPL, the company also faces a shortfall in its technical capacity to execute its operations.
“We are taking steps to increase the technical capacity of GPL by recruiting an additional 10 engineers with relevant skills to ensure adequate maintenance and reliability in the system,” the President said.
President Ali said too that government, on a number of occasions, has sought to recruit the services of Guyanese engineers but was unsuccessful.
“So we are working. For example, I just concluded meetings with the Cuban Ambassador, they have skilled, very skilled technical personnel who they are willing to deploy immediately to work in the system and to help us technically,” he announced.
Additionally, President Ali announced that the government through GPL entered into a time charter agreement with UCC Holding for a power ship to be deployed to Guyana within three weeks. Upon arrival, the ship will be connected to the national grid. This arrangement he said will add 36 megawatts of power to the national grid to offset generation shortfalls.
Kaieteur News understands that this facility involves the chartering of a power supply vessel that will be connected to the Demerara –Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) at Everton in Berbice, which would provide timely support to the generation capacity of GPL and relief for consumers connected to DBIS grid.
Further, President Ali said that the vessel would be chartered for a period of 24 months from the date of commencement of the agreement and that this power arrangement is being obtained at a very competitive cost.
“It will cover the charter cost of the vessel including its generating engines as well as operation and maintenance cost,” he noted.
He continued, “It is important for us to note and I want to say this again that while this facility will come in place based on what we are seeing. Based on the projections we have to go after more power. But this facility gives us that room to make the investments in the age infrastructure that we have to ensure that, that infrastructure all of it is brought on stream to support the demand for energy.”
On Friday, Kaieteur News reported that Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo at his press conference on Thursday revealed that Guyana is finalising an agreement with a Turkish power company – Karpowership for the supply of the 36 megawatts of power.
Jagdeo said that Karpowership would sell the electricity at 8 cents per megawatt over the next two years. He said Guyana would supply the fuel to the barge.
According to Jagdeo, the power supply barge will help supply electricity until the Wales Gas-to-Energy– natural gas-fired electricity generation power plant is completed in 2025.
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