— CEO Bharat Dindyal
CHIEF Executive Officer of the Guyana Power & Light Incorporated (GPL), Mr. Bharat Dindyal, told the company’s stakeholders, at last Thursday’s meeting, that there are quite substantial infrastructural developmental works in progress that would see dramatic improvement in the quality of electricity service being provided to consumers in West Demerara. He added that Mr. Frederick Dias, Social Management Expert — who was present at the meeting — has been engaged by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to work along with GPL to oversee improvement of the network in specific areas across the country, and that the IDB has retained the services of two other experts to assist GPL in implementing the project, one is a network/distribution expert and the other is a social management expert.
He stated that both the Guyana Electricity Corporation (GEC) and the Guyana Power & Light Incorporated (GPL) have traditionally been doing work in communities and leaving without sharing any information with customers on how that work was going to impact the services being offered.
However, in a recent discussion with five experts from The Dominican Republic, GPL management was made to realise that there was great opportunity to engage customers about what the company was doing to improve its services; hence Mr. Dias was here to work with GPL to map out an approach to be used in dealing with all communities, and GPL would be working to engage consumers on what it was doing to improve services.
He said, “At GPL, I think (that), firstly, I must admit that one of the areas we have failed miserably in over the years is engaging our customers, and very often we are told that there is a vast void between us and our customers (because) the customers don’t understand what we are doing.
“This infrastructural development project we are implementing will improve quality service to West and East Coast Demerara and the whole of Berbice.”
Dindyal stated that GPL had embarked on a US$42M infrastructural development programme, the money was coming from the China Import/Export Bank, and the work is being executed by a Chinese contractor.
He noted that the power supply on the West Coast/Bank of Demerara had traditionally been fragile and heavily dependent on the Versailles Power Station at West Bank Demerara, but the GPL has now established a link with the Garden of Eden Power Station, East Bank Demerara, to improve the power situation on the West Coast/Bank Demerara.
He pointed out that with GPL’s expansion project on the West and East Bank/Coast of Demerara, tremendous pressure has been put on generation capacity in those regions. GPL was in a position of having inadequate power capacity on West Coast/Bank of Demerara, forcing the entity to augment supply with mobile Caterpillar sets at Leonora, West Coast Demerara; nevertheless, the daily situation was in reality a battle to deliver the required power in West Coast/Bank Demerara.
Dindyal added that he was at the Garden of Eden Power Station two and a half weeks ago; working with an engineer to re-configure the system to improve capacity to provide power to consumers on the West Coast/Bank Demerara, and the project the GPL was implementing would dramatically improve the situation shortly.