GPL thugs and neighbours from hell

I AM a 57-year-old woman who lives alone in a two-storey house in a new housing scheme.

When my house was being built, I was overwhelmed with responsibilities of a demanding but highly-paid executive job with a mining firm, and it necessitated much travel in the hinterland. I also had a pregnant daughter who was very sick prior and subsequent to giving birth to my grandchild. Her husband was in the USA, so she was left in my sole care, as was my grandson when he was born.

I was very naïve and trusting at that time, thinking that anyone who originated from rural areas was completely honest, so I visited my house under construction only twice before my grandson’s birth, and not at all after his birth.

At that time I was earning a lot of money but was paying a heavy rental, so I was waiting eagerly for the completion of my house.

With my savings, a large mortgage; free stone, trucking, sand and Readymix concrete for all my solid cast work, which included floors and roof, my house should have been fully completed with money to spare. Also, I had bought all my blocks from the prison service at reduced rates, with free delivery provided. I had a wonderful relationship with business houses, so I was being provided material of every kind at cost prices or very reduced prices.

I little knew that the contractor and the neighbours had struck a deal on a 40/60% basis, and as fast as my materials were being bought, they were being re-sold to other homeowners in the scheme or to the neighbours themselves. The carpenters, who were costing me a labour bill in excess of $300,000 per week, were working on other people’s houses on my time. When the time to start re-paying the mortgage had arrived and the money had been exhausted, I thought that I had a home to go to.

To my horror, I reached four walls – no windows, no interiors, no fixtures, no finishing of any kind; while the neighbours, most of whom had been living in huts on land on which they had been squatting before the scheme was regularized when I first visited, were living in large, fully completed concrete houses. I was left with a heavy mortgage and no habitable house.

I was forced to pay rent and a heavy monthly mortgage while my brother made my house minimally habitable for me to move in to the upper apartment. Bit by bit, I improved upon it until two apartments were habitable.
But the neighbours continued to steal my material. Half of a truckload of sand would disappear in the night; my materials and steel rods disappeared from under my house; all my tools disappeared from my back verandah.

I was weeding one day and just ran up to answer the phone. By the time I reached downstairs again, my cutlass had disappeared. My fruits were stolen. My bearing fruit trees and my dog were poisoned. Recently, I arrived home to find all my drainage pipes had been wrenched loose and stolen.

They did not know how I earned my living, so they conjectured when I left by plane for Teperu that I was selling drugs. My company’s drivers picked me up and dropped me back at all hours, while sometimes I slept at my daughter’s home, arriving home the next day in her clothes, so they assumed I was a prostitute because they could not understand how a simple woman as I am could single-handedly build the kind of house that I have with all the responsibilities that I had. And all the while they were spreading rumours to this effect, I was unconscious of it all, not realizing that I was being slandered to that extent, until the men in the neighbourhood began harassing me, thinking I was an easy target, and their wives got very vengeful.

One woman even pushed me into a large water-filled hole in the road because I walked on the parapet in front of her house.

One man offered to keep my keys and turn my lights on and off. I come from a community where neighbours stand together in crisis situations, so I handed him my keys. When I returned home, my storeroom had been emptied and personal effects had gone missing, including my son’s fan and my Citizen’s watch from off my desk. My phone bill had gone so high it had been disconnected, and I lost the line.

By this time they had realized my compassionate nature, because I never refused to help anyone, so they conspired with a young conman to ask me for lodging in my empty lower apartment. I refused, but I had to help my daughter during a crisis period, and my son visited during this period, so they sent back the conman, who told my son that I had promised to let him stay in my lower apartment. My children are basically honest and trusting, like I was then, so my son took his words at face value. By the time I went back home, they had broken all my locks and stripped my house of all valuables and removable fixtures. The conman and the neighbours then beat me and put me out of my own house. They were using my home as a brothel.

When I went to report to the police station, I was arrested instead on a charge that I had stolen from them. They had made this charge by a police inspector friend of a political leader one neighbour supported. This person had once robbed me, and I had exposed him in the media when he tried to denigrate Dr. Jagan in the sugar industry. He and his marketing manager subsequently went all out to besmirch my reputation and destroy my credibility.

The police never visited my home to investigate, but I was beaten and locked up for days under the most terrible conditions; and had to run to court for over a year, while my name was splashed all over the media, labelling me a thief and blasting my hitherto impeccable reputation to smithereens even as my profession depended on my good reputation.

Since then, they never let me live in peace, and I could never, to this day, understand the grudge; except one day when I was standing on my roof they started to abuse me, saying that I liked to look down on them, which is not the case. But I am a very busy and private person, and have no time to socialize, except for the basic courtesies.
One of the ways they harass me is to instigate against me people with whom I have to associate, or employ in any way.

ENTER GPL
My daughter moved into my lower apartment for a while, during which time she used many appliances until she moved out, then I only left a security light on. Two GPL personnel came one day and accused me of stealing electricity in my lower apartment because the bill was recording very low consumption, unlike when my daughter was living there. Despite checking the meter and assuring themselves that there had been no tampering, they threatened to remove my meters – both upstairs where I live and the lower flat. I was horrified because I am terrified of the dark, all of my foodstuff that I had bought for my grandson would have been spoilt; plus I earn my living on a computer. They refused to leave, harassing me for a long time until I handed one of them $10,000 to leave me alone. After leaving my yard, they went to chat with a neighbour, with all of them converging and laughing at me.

Recently, a friend residing overseas called and asked me to arrange a funeral for her father, which necessitated that I travel out of town. When the taxi was taking me to the park, the driver remarked that he had just paid his electricity bill. I had not received a bill, so did not realize payments were due, but I estimated what the cost was and gave in excess of that estimate to pay my bill. He did not pay it that day but the next day. I had just arrived home when the GPL crew came to disconnect my lights. I argued with them that my bill was paid, even though it probably had not registered from the Surepay location, but I did not have my receipt as it was in the possession of the taxi driver. I know if I had paid him a bribe he would not have cut my lights, but I refused to give in to his bullyism and told him to do his worst, then I caught a taxi and left for my daughter’s home to finish my work.

I later learnt that he was stopped on his return by the neighbours, whom my informant said he saw gesticulating and pointing at my home, after which they burst into loud laughter before the GPL employees continued on their way.
I was so busy it took a week before I could find time to visit GPL’s office to pay the reconnection fees. I still had not collected my receipt from the taxi driver, so when the same bully demanded a receipt before he reconnected my lights, I lost my cool and told him GPL needs to get its act together and get their records straight, rather than harass consumers. The neighbours came out to join him in obvious anticipation of a plan, when he started abusing me, saying that I need a man, holding his crotch and gyrating and asking me when he should visit me, while the neighbours egged him on and taunted me, as is their usual wont, as he continued his vulgarities and his abuse.

GPL employs a bunch of bullies who use threats to extort money from consumers, especially those they perceive to be PPP supporters. The company’s employees have many times been caught blatantly stealing from consumers on several occasions, but they are allowed to put ladders and climb up on people’s houses in their absence. GPL is threatening busy homeowners that if they do not leave their gates unlocked and premises unsecured for meter readers they will remove people’s meters, instead of sending their meter readers when they know working people would be home.

GPL, unlike GT&T, does not have a regular due date, and does not deliver bills on time; and trying to reach them on the phone to query the status of one’s bills is time-consuming and torturous. This entity is the least consumer-friendly in Guyana; but it has a monopoly and seemingly does not care to institute reforms that could put consumers at ease. To avoid such contretemps, I applied for a pre-paid meter approximately a year ago, but have so far not received a response.

Paying consumers are treated shabbily, while people who openly steal current are left in peace. GPL gives consumers long periods of blackouts at crucial times, give brownouts that destroy people’s expensive equipment, and one cannot even begin to think of compensation. Without a bill, busy people lose track of time, and one day after, even for minimal amounts of money, people are deprived of their electricity, with all the agony and losses this implies.

After reporting the incident with the re-connection crew, I warned them that I was going to go to the media with this story, thinking I would receive redress. Instead, yesterday, Saturday 6th September, a disconnection crew came to my home to inform me they were going to remove my meter from which they had investigated meter tampering.

They had done that investigation months, approximately a year ago, and cleared my meter of any flaws or tampering, so I told them they were harassing me and I don’t trust them, and I refused to open my gate, whereupon the man began abusing me, calling me racist whose “eyes pass black men”, and he promised that he was going to show me what he could do; so he cut off my light, despite they had checked and found no sign of interference with the meter and I did not owe GPL but had instead overpaid on my bill.

It seems that in this so-called democratic society, a single woman cannot stand up to defend her rights or else she is labelled. He informed me I would have to pay a re-connection fee, and if he passed and saw any light in my house, he would report me as stealing electricity and I will have to face the courts.

Well, he would see lights on in my house, because I have a separate meter to my upper apartment.
However, I live alone and I get a security light from the downstairs apartment. The light on the lamppost has been dysfunctional for a long time. GPL has been known to have criminals on staff who were caught committing serious crimes, and it seems I am being targeted.

Who knows to what extent they will go? If any harm comes to me, I will hold GPL directly responsible.

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