THE Public Utilities Commission (PUC) awarded $53,407,551 in credits to consumers from the various utility companies in 2021, with 88.8 per cent of the payments being from the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL).

GPL was ordered to pay out a total of $47,881,088.00 while the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT) had to hand over $3,928,712 and the Guyana Water Inc (GWI), $1,597,751. No amounts were awarded against Digicel or E-Networks, which are the other utility companies monitored by the PUC.

The monies were awarded to consumers by the service providers mainly for adjustments due to incorrect billing to the customers’ accounts, breaches of standards and as rebates.

The PUC considered the payouts as being one of its biggest achievements for the 2021 period, where it was also able to place stronger emphasis on the efficiency of the operators and their quality of service. The Commission also worked with the service providers to ensure that new statutory areas of reporting to the Commission were met.

For the year, the Commission received 529 complaints from consumers, and was also able to resolve 88 per cent of the complaints, and believed that was due to the Commission having rekindled collaborative efforts with the various service providers to expedite the resolution of matters filed against them

“88 per cent of all complaints received in 2021 were resolved despite challenges faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the highest rate of resolution for the past five years,” PUC Complaints Manager, Destra Bourne, said.

For yet another year GTT racked up the most consumer complaints at the PUC accounting for 65 per cent or 344 of the complaints received for the year. However, 333 or 97 per cent of those complaints have since been resolved.

GPL had the second largest number of complaints—127 – lodged against it at the PUC in 2021. Of those complaints, 61 per cent were resolved by the end of December 2021

Fifty-three complaints were lodged against GWI, of which all but four have been resolved. Digicel had five complaints while there were no complaints against E-Networks for the period.
The PUC explained that the complaints were mainly due to billing issues.

“Billing issues formed the majority of complaints filed against GPL and GWI. Of the 344 complaints filed against GTT, 68 per cent related to technical issues. With respect to Digicel, all complaints received were technical in nature,” Bourne informed.

Responding to questions on what GTT is doing to address its continuous position as the company with the most complaints, GTT Chief Executive Officer, Damien Blackburn, noted that the majority of the complaints against the company had to do with its DSL service.

According to Blackburn, the company is trying to directly address this by expanding the coverage of its alternative and upgraded fibre network, and getting more customers to switch to that service from the DSL.

“We’re working very hard to reduce the number of complaints, not just at the PUC but any complaints we receive. Our mission is to make all of our customers happy. We are very committed to doing that and made massive strides in  reducing the backlog of repairs by two thirds by the end of November and we’re working to further reduce it in Q1 [of 2022],” Blackburn said in an interview on Friday.

Blackburn noted that, notwithstanding the high number of complaints, the company did make some progress in reducing the rate of complaints during the fourth quarter of last year.

“We’ve made significant progress since we launched our customer promise to reliably connect customers and the PUC complaints were reduced by 55 per cent in Q4 compared to earlier in the year. That’s as a result of all of our efforts in that regard and it’s not the end of the journey,” Blackburn said.