Latest update June 4th, 2026 12:30 AM
Excuses, excuses, excuses
Kaieteur News – ‘The dog ate the homework.’ Believe it or not, that was a favorite fallback option of students in American High Schools, which extended its life into some institutions of higher learning there. Locally, the PPPC Government is much swifter on its feet where excuses and blame-shedding are concerned, and the Guyana Power and Light, Inc., (GPL) is the place under review. It has been one pathetic excuse after another when the woeful performance of the GPL comes up for scrutiny under the public spotlight. Even a man like Vice President Bharat Jagdeo, one who always has a long sack of excuses at his ready reach, could not resist displaying his wisdom on what has gone wrong in the dismal record of the GPL. In recent times, blackouts have assumed conditions that are blizzard like. There is nothing white in Guyanese existence, not when they see red amid the thick, rolling blackness. How many more episodes of this torturous condition is the lament? How much longer, is what Guyanese shaken and sickened by waves of blackouts want to know?
Chief policymaker Jagdeo, as usual, had his policy, answers all lined up. His first finger is bad management. It’s a safe policy, one that the ever-clever Jagdeo would not let pass. Who in GPL management would dare to put up a fight, and bend Jagdeo’s finger to point right back at himself? Bad management is free and easy to say, and it gives space to ignore the political management foisted on the GPL. The record is of seasoned GPL managers removed or reassigned, and political managers who know as much about energy as Guyanese know about astronomy being the proxies left to run the GPL show, and pretending to know what needs to be done. What could be had by citizens when such is the management game played by the PPPC Government? Only a political sage like VP Jagdeo could put on his blindfold and point in the direction of bad GPL management. He knows he can get away with making farcical statements like that, so he plunges shamelessly into the ugly GPL fray.
His next target worthy of carrying some of the blame load was transmission lines. The GPL transmission lines are old, as if he suddenly stumbled upon that piece of cast-iron wisdom. After 23 years in office in phase one of PPPC Government rulership and over four years and counting currently, Bharat Jagdeo woke up in darkness, rolled into some rays of blinding light, and old transmission lines have now been added to the list of GPL scapegoats. This is not good for blackout plagued Guyanese: if it took the chief policymaker almost 28 years to discover that the GPL transmission lines are ancient, then it stands to reason that he and his government may require another 28 calendars to do something, as in replacing them. New housing schemes are going up all over and they come with their own energy demands, which puts additional pressure on the system. No citizen should find fault with that disclosure. But does a man wait until his new house is built and occupied to start thinking about having some toilet facilities? Forward thinking, with a comprehensive program with a plan to match, has so much to recommend as a standard. When things are done for the excitement of sound bites, on the run, and by the seat of the pants, then Guyanese energy consumers get what they get, and live with what they must. Today, and many blighted years before, blackouts have become a way of life.
The much-anticipated relief from a Turkish power boat has turned out to be a blackout bath. Then policy maestro Jagdeo douses Guyanese with his own version of political darkness. The PPPC Government used to love treating the PNC rule as “28 years of darkness.” Presently, the PPPC Government has compiled its own 28 years of darkness record, and it is not only about what is related to the failures of the GPL. The PPPC Government may think it is nimble footed with excuses: wires tornstand as one culprit, piledriving is a new whipping post. Nimble with energy excuses, yes. Nincompoop energy governance also stands unchallenged.
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