The blackout problem

Jul 17, 2025 Editorial, News

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Kaieteur News – Yesterday former Public Infrastructure Minister, David Patterson reminded us that “after spending tens of billions of taxpayers’ money; 27 second-hand generators; two power ships, shady fuel contracts, a gas-to-shore project – we are worse off than when the PPP returned to office.”

His blunt assessment, though with a touch of partisan twist cannot be denied by anyone. Close to 60 years as an independent nation, our leaders have failed miserably in fixing the power generation and supply problem. And this is happening at a time when this country is now blessed with more barrels of energy than it knows what to do with, yet Guyanese cannot see their hands or faces in the daytime. It is that dark, and Guyanese are now back in the day with a rolling wave of blackouts blanketing many communities and homes.

We are heading into another general elections and citizens will hear the same promises from our leaders that they will fix the blackout problem. In another country, the people in government and the power company would all be sent on their way. They have no clues; they have no ideas; they have no visions.

But they are rich in public relations that pull the wool over the heads of Guyanese, only adding another layer of darkness to the existing near normal state of blackouts. As Patterson noted tens of billions have been allocated to the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) since 2020, yet Guyanese are subjected to increasing blackout tortures. The heat is round the clock, and without fans, Guyanese are left to swelter and suffocate in their frustrations. The cost-of-living is going up and up, and food storage appliances can only do the jobs that they were designed for so long without energy from the GPL. The Guyanese who can afford generators, inverters, and solar power are a tiny minority in the local population, which means that the majority is getting battered by the streams of blackouts that occur with increasing regularity.

Some communities experience blackouts several times a day, and residents have complained that the outages last longer and longer. In all of this, the government, normally so loud and expressive, is struck dumb, and has little to offer, other than platitudes. Right next to the government stands the people at the GPL, and they are also lost, and without solutions of substance. All the many millions spent, all the new equipment and technology obtained, and Guyanese are reduced to living like how their grandparents did, with candlesticks and lampstands being what they can depend on.

Hundreds of billions are being spent annually for roads and bridges, but Guyanese have to grope for a firestick to see their way in their homes. The PPP/C Government should be ashamed, and the entire Cabinet should bag its head, and find some remote place to dig a big hole and bury itself. On each occasion that any of their leading people opens their mouths and pontificates about how good this government is, the spittle from their deceptions dribble all over them. This is beyond shameful, for blackouts have become such a chronic condition that they now amount to a national epidemic.

It is especially ironic and frustrating that Guyana, now a major oil-producing country, cannot provide stable electricity to its citizens. Billions of US dollars have flowed into the national coffers from oil revenues, yet the power grid remains brittle and outdated. What is the point of resource wealth if it cannot guarantee the most basic needs?

The government must take immediate and bold action. It is time it treats energy infrastructure as a top national priority. It has been putting its hope in the much vaunted gas-to-energy project, but the time for completion and putting that project in operation keeps moving, as though it is some game being played on a field. When Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo is involved in something as big as the Wales GTE, then games are what Guyanese have had to live with. It is more than a time-consuming game, for it is also an expensive one. The project started out at approximately US$900M, then kept ballooning and ballooning until it settled at US$2B. As expected, that turned out to be for a time only. The time for the delivery of this much-anticipated project keeps extending, and also the cost of it. If that reminds readers of past Jagdeo projects, it is.

We believe that if the GTE is part of government’s energy reform, then it must establish a clear timeline and binding commitments, with regular public reporting. It is no longer sufficient to announce, projects execution is what matters now. Finally, there needs to be a deeper cultural shift in how public utilities are managed. Professionalism, transparency, and customer-centric thinking must define the GPL of the future. It may even be time to consider unbundling GPL or allowing regulated competition to inject dynamism into a stagnating sector. Guyana stands at a crossroads: it can continue patching a failing system, or it can use the current crisis as the catalyst for transformative change. The people of Guyana deserve a reliable power supply, and no excuse will suffice.

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• blackout, David Patterson, Editorial, GPL

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