THE residents of the entire Lethem and the interior locations have been without electricity for seven hours with 17 hours light each day since July 18, 2012. My letter offered restrained and no praise to those who have caused this senseless situation which reminds me of the Rupununi uprising in January 1969. Blackouts have returned to paralyse the entire region very often.
I am not quite sure how this has not yet made the news. The township and principal centre of government administration in the Rupununi district are not as isolated and prehistoric as sometimes misconceived- they, like everyone else, have no access to NCN, they are using the Brazilian dish and their learning channel for one; that state entity has no coverage. Thus, I was hoping the news of this fiasco would have made headlines.
Come on, Guyana Chronicle, Stabroek News and Kaieteur News, do you not think that constant and prolonged periods  of blackout is worthy of some coverage? Private businesses, particularly supermarkets, were strangled yet again, counting damage to goods and other losses; and government institutions, already plagued with festering   losses of revenues, especially the GRA, and heavily dependent on electricity are affected.
At this time, I empathise with those students who are possibly intent on completing assignments now for tomorrow- assignments which may have required online research. Not only will this disaster provide these young people with excuses for not completing work, but it will also grant them an opportunity(albeit a tortuous one) to experience the gloom and incompetence of yesteryear which their parents possibly voted to eliminate. They will understand what it means to literally burn the midnight oil, but more importantly, how pregnant with truth this statement is: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
It is my understanding that at this very moment, there has been no fuel supply since July 18, 2012, because of the Linden protest and the government and engineers are working to rectify the fault.
Here in Lethem the people are smugly confident that power will be restored as soon as the opposition parties and the government meet and there will be no more interruptions at least throughout the year.
For those who reside there in the interior locations  though, and who are conscientious enough to maintain objectivity, Lethem  is already in  an artificial night imposed by a dysfunctional state entity, the symptom of the trickle- down effect of disturbances  from higher rungs.