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‘Heads must roll for collapsing GPL poles’–Jagdeo
Kaieteur News- President Bharrat Jagdeo told reporters on Thursday that persons should be fired and blacklisted for the concrete poles that recently collapsed in South Ruimveldt Georgetown.
The incident caused blackout for around 2000 residents. Jagdeo said that the incident caused him great grief and made him infuriated. He said it is time that government starts firing people who are not doing their work and are being paid to oversee projects be done properly but are neglecting their duties. “Imagine if that didn’t happen there we would have never known that these poles were not placed according to specs because someone either the contractor didn’t do their work properly and if the contractor didn’t do their work properly they had to do it with the complicity of the person who is supervising the work and there should be consequences, people have to be blacklisted and fired for these sorts of things or it’s not going to change,” the vice president said.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo.
Citing that the government has been on a journey to upgrade Aubrey Barker Road as part of its city upgrade plans, he highlighted that since the project a number of new businesses have sprung up and property value has also gone up. “So consistent with this we are extending the Aubrey Barker Road, and we want the community to benefit from all of these changes.
He explained that he did some digging and realised that it was not an ordinary accident that brought discomfort to the community. In fact, the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) and the Public Works Ministry will have to provide credible information on the situation justifying what exactly went wrong. “I’m going to be on their case until we get to the bottom of this, because for one these poles that were moved there from the wooden poles to the concrete poles they were moved out of the path way to expand the road,” the Vice President said.
He said information reaching him suggests that the poles were not laid according to specifications. “So the Public Works Ministry will have to say who was responsible for the design. Additional information will have to be provided as to, “what was the contractor paid for whether it’s a design fault or the contractor did not comply with the design and who supervised this, which engineers designed this and allowed this to happen.”
On December 14 this publication reported that GPL had blamed ongoing road and drainage works for the collapse of the poles which caused a 24-hour power outage in South Ruimveldt, Georgetown.
The collapsing poles last week.
Power was disrupted around 19:00 hrs. on Thursday last. Shortly thereafter, videos and photographs of concrete utility poles hanging dangerously over Aubrey Barker Road, in the vicinity of Spurwing Drive, South Ruimveldt began circulating.
The viral circulation of photographs on social media resulted in widespread concern for safety as the GPL workers rushed to remedy the situation. Residents blamed the road contractors for the disaster that not only left them in darkness but without access to the roadway for several hours. In its press release GPL stated that at approximately 20:07 hrs. on the evening it received a report of the falling poles. Upon inspection, it was determined that ongoing road and drainage works had compromised the foundation of GPL’s network infrastructure, leading to the collapse, GPL stated. Prime Minister Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips and a team had also visited the site
(‘Heads must roll for collapsing GPL poles’–Jagdeo)
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