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Blackouts
Editorial…
Kaieteur News- Guyanese are suffering from burnout, which comes from too much emotional and psychological stress. Accusatory fingers are rightly pointed at the GPL Inc., and its main output, which takes the form of too many blackouts. The PPPC Government is due its full share of criticisms, given its cluelessness and its crooked speech. Whenever the government presents a cover story as to the reason for blackouts, angry citizens shake their heads in disbelief, so distrusted it has become. Not just on electricity, but on most of the major developments in Guyana. Both GPL and the PPPC Government come in for their share of blows. The reputations of both have never been lower, with the cries for an improved supply of electricity rising higher all the time.
In May 2024, the first powership from Turkey’s Karpowership International came on stream with 36 megawatts of electricity. The second powership added 60 megawatts of energy to the nation’s electricity grid in late December 2024, which increased its capacity to 265 megawatts of power. A comfortable cushion, given that peak national demand was estimated to be 195 megawatts. The PPPC Government’s Deodat Indar, Minister of Public Works and Prime Minister Mark Phillips both overflowed with delight in the height of the holiday season, when the second powership was hooked up to the grid. Guyanese could expect a steady supply of electricity, with blackouts on the way out. Something went wrong somewhere, with the GPL and the government looking more and more like rank amateurs, and not knowing their left from their right foot.
The reality of Guyanese energy consumers is that the blackouts have continued. Households to small businesses have been impacted, two energy segments that can least manage to handle the spate of blackouts that has become such a regular feature of life in Guyana. For decades, this has been the ordeal that Guyanese are forced to deal with day after day, and under one government or the other. Government leaders and ministers responsible for energy make big speeches, spend bigger amounts of money, and make still bigger fools of energy famished citizens.
It is clear that neither the governments nor the different GPL managements know what they are doing. They have no answers, know no short-term relief, and offer no long-term solutions. On most occasions when they came up with what was hailed as the solution, that quickly fell apart. The powerboats are the latest example of what has not delivered what was promised. The APNU+AFC Coalition had recruited a Jamaican to lead the GPL, and he had made some inroads. When the government changed in August 2020, he left Guyana, with local energy consumers left to return to the bad old days of blackouts tormenting their existence. A question that is constantly on the minds of infuriated Guyanese is what happened to all the millions spent over the years. A second, more pointed one is: whose pockets in the government were filled with money skimmed from what was supposed to be spent to ease Guyana’s electricity woes.
Another question is how long are Guyanese going to take these assaults on their senses and patience, from the GPL and the Guyana Government? While Guyanese hope for relief from any quarter, citizens are not impressed with the company’s record of nepotism, corruption, waste, and energy standards that are not worth the description. We at this publication have often asked ourselves a question. Has the GPL become more in the mold of Guysuco, viz., an entity being fed one huge cash infusion after another, which sets up insiders close to the government to help themselves lavishly to the millions flowing in? And while Guyanese struggle to cope with the constant stream of blackouts, and make sense of what is going on. We consider it a fair position, for what has the citizens of this country received, if not promises followed by more promises, only to be left high and dry day and night? When it is not a fallen pole, it’s a ‘problem’ inside GPL.
Considering the woes that have visited the GPL, it seems that only a modern-day miracle of divine origins could deliver. Some development in the form of ‘let there be light.’
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