REGIONAL Executive Officer (REO) Region One, Lieutenant Colonel Randy Storm, is concerned about the motive behind an alleged recent sabotage attempt of the generator powering the Mabaruma Hospital, a key facility to the region.

In an interview with the Guyana Chronicle on Tuesday, Storm said that the night before, an individual or individuals slackened the bolts on the hospital’s generator permitting air to enter its fuel system causing it to shut down.

The matter was reported to the police, the generator was taken a part by a technician to be fixed and, in the interim, the main generator at a nearby powerhouse had to be used. Such steps were crucial as Storm explained that the hospital has about 40 patients with outpatients coming in daily for treatment. “I want this thing to be known what these people are doing in the area,” Storm told the newspaper.

“We only have one generator working in the area so they’re trying to blackout the place and then call hysteria by saying that ‘the hospital ain’t got current’…that’s a big scandal [about] how the government ain’t provide generator services and the existing machine can’t work. If that generator shuts down, we are in a hell of a hubble.”

Storm said that the technician called in to fix the issue confirmed that there was no way that the bolts on the generator could get loose on their own without tampering. Added to that, Storm believes that it was a definite attempt at creating trouble as the generator is too large to be stolen. “We reported the matter to the police and what we are doing is we are posting a guard on the generator to see that nobody goes there,” the REO said. “This has never happened before…this is a deliberate attempt. People just want to create mischief in the region to blame the government.”