CHIEF Executive Officer of the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL), Mr. Bharat Dindyal, said Friday that the company is moving away from the traditional wallaba poles since their use has become problematic.

He made the disclosure during a press conference held at the GPL Boardroom at 91 Duke Street, Kingston, Georgetown, where he pointed out that for infrastructure development projects, GPL has had to import pine poles, an extraordinary thing to do; and so far, GPL has imported 600 poles, and that project was severely delayed; and recently, 400 more poles arrived here. The pine poles are being planted on the East Coast of Demerara.
Dindyal however cautioned that the pine poles are being treated with arsenic, an effective poison, and is urging people in communities where the pine poles are planted to be aware of this factor. He said that children should not play around those poles, being used here for network construction, and not approved for household furniture in foreign countries.
He said the quantity of local poles being made available to GPL is being reduced, and their quality is not as obtained previously, but the prices continues to rise, thus the GPL has had to look at alternative types of structures.
Dindyal added that the cheapest price for a local pole is approximately US$1500, which is very expensive and excludes any expenditure on the foundation; and GPL continues to examine this expenditure because soil conditions in the city are poor.
He said that GPL has had many instances when local poles planted in the city have sunk several feet below the mark where they were planted. Concrete poles have been considered to replace the local poles, but the foundation would likely prove problematic and costly.
He said consumers are not allowing GPL to trim fruit trees that are encumbering the GPL network, but high winds can cause trees to end up falling on the lines; so he is therefore asking the public to allow GPL to trim trees that encumber the network.

Infrastructure Developmental Project
Dindyal said the GPL Infrastructure Developmental Project is seeing a new sub-station being constructed at Golden Grove, East Bank Demerara, and he is hoping it will come on stream in September or October. GPL is also hoping that construction of the city sub-stations would be finished by next month, because it would enable the power company to deploy feeders to cover the area between Garden of Eden and Sophia. Dindyal explained there are four circuits emanating from the new sub-stations, and those would enable the power company to utilise all four circuits in alternative arrangements to provide power in future emergency situations.
He added that GPL is currently handicapped in having only one feeder coming from Garden of Eden, and one from Sophia bridging the gap between the two; and now that a new sub-station is being inserted, it will allow the GPL to do vastly better in addressing any incident in the future.
Dindyal said, “We will have more options, also consumers, to get a better quality of supply. So although consumers will be switched, they will benefit from good quality supply.”
The sub-station at Good Hope, East Coast Demerara is impacting the East Coast Demerara corridor, and the three feeders on that section will be offloaded. There are four feeders from that sub-station taking off that overload.