-so as not to increase tariff
THE GUYANA Power and Light Inc. (GPL) has taken a decision to defer capital investments after spending an additional US$8 million on fuel so far for the year due to the high cost of petroleum-based products needed to generate power. Speaking to Guyana Chronicle on Friday, Company CEO, Bharat Dindyal said the entity has had to do some serious belt tightening in order to avoid what seemed like an inevitable tariff increase.

“We have adopted measures to ensure that we could handle the increase in fuel prices without [resorting to] a tariff increase,” he said.

Dindyal said over the past weeks, heavy fuel hovered around US$110 per barrel, while diesel went as high as US$130 per barrel.

He said Parliament recently approved the refinancing of GPL, in terms of new generation capacity, thus saving the company from having to meet these expenditures from its own resources. He said that because of this, the company can now use the savings to finance fuel purchases at higher prices.

The company will have to put on hold some planned capital projects until the fuel situation improves, Dindyal said, adding that with every US$ increase in fuel, it costs GPL an additional US$1 million per year.

On the issue of loss prevention, the CEO said while the company is making steady but slow progress, it will be accelerating the process by swooping down on a number of communities where it is suspected that people are stealing electricity meters from premises, especially those placed temporarily on construction sites. He said that in other areas where illegal connections are rife, those found guilty will face the full force of the law.

Some weeks ago, Dindyal had reported that GPL was able to significantly reduce loss by employing a combination of initiatives. “We brought down losses last year by over three per cent. Currently, we are below 30 per cent [in terms of losses]. We have to continue to maintain our posture and losses, and try to achieve continued success,” he’d said during a site visit of the new Kingston power plant.

He’d also said that theft was still a major problem, in that it would appear as if everyone who is stealing power had to find themselves before the court and for some people multiple times, before they realise that they should not be stealing electricity. “It is not something that will go away overnight; it has to be a long, sustained and focussed campaign for this to happen,” he said.

He’d said too that the company was taking a number of steps to curb the theft of electricity, one of which was the use of a special type of meter — the Itron meter — for large consumers in a secure environment. For small customers, the company is pushing the prepaid meter, which has the advantage of discouraging the consumer from accessing it with the intention of tampering with it.

There have been many amendments to the Electricity Sector Reform Act, and they are now more stringent measures that the court can employ to deal with persons found stealing electricity, such as stiffer terms of imprisonment, Dindyal said.

“We need to really use those tools to enforce and to try to break the culture; we saw in the past cases where people were jailed and in that particular area [where they live], the message went out and people did not press ahead with wide electricity theft,” he said, adding:
“We have to make examples of people before they start registering in their minds that they cannot steal electricity and just walk away. GPL will come after you. It is only a matter of time.”