— authorities say uncompromising, robust maintenance regime reinstated
— with broader aim being production of cheaper, sustainable energy

A PROGRESSIVE outlook is being restored to the Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL), which, according to the Office of the Prime Minister, was mismanaged and bankrupted prior to August 2020.

In direct response to comments by former Minister of Public Infrastructure, now the Public Works Ministry, David Patterson, on the current state of the power company, Prime Minister Brigadier (ret’d) Mark Phillips, in a statement on Tuesday, said:

“We have already set the record straight with respect to our inherited burdens in August 2020 of a mismanaged and bankrupt Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) under the portfolio of former minister, David Patterson.”

Prime Minister Phillips went on to say: “In his desperate quest for relevance following his stupendous ouster from the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament, Patterson continues to unabatingly promulgate smokescreens and downright falsehoods about the surreptitious operations he personally orchestrated at GPL and Power Producers and Distributors Inc (PPDI).”

This, authorities said, was done in the absence of a Board of Directors at GPL for almost two years. Within this time, Patterson was the sole decision-maker at GPL and, based on statistics from the power company, the results of those decisions were “disastrous.”

Referencing an example of those imprudent decisions, the Prime Minister said that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government, upon its election to office in August 2020, found that GPL had outstanding receivables of $13 billion, which was owed by government ministries and agencies — this had a crippling effect on the company.

LACK OF MAINTENANCE
“Again, we reiterate, that under the leadership of Mr Patterson we saw the lack of maintenance on the transmission lines, coupled with the little to no investment in baseload generation capacity, which are the main reasons for the blackouts we are experiencing,” Prime Minister Phillips said.

He added: “As has been the hallmark of successive PPP/C administrations, the problems and burdens created for our citizens by the selfish, elitist machinations of the failed PNC [People’s National Congress] of yesteryear and more recently, their cloak and dagger replacement, the APNU+AFC [A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change] regime, are being permanently corrected by us for the medium and long-term.”

The government, Prime Minister Phillips said, has been working “tirelessly” to restore the progressive outlook of GPL within a broader framework of cheaper and more sustainable energy production to improve the daily lives of every citizen.

Already, authorities have reinstated the uncompromising, robust maintenance regime at GPL, reverting to the above-board procurement practice for the use of original spares directly from the source; and getting back to the well-established pre-2015 schedule of maintenance of transmission lines across the entire grid system.

SIGNIFICANT INCREASES
In the medium term, significant increases in the generated power will be achieved in response to the demand, with the internal introduction of nine additional sets, and a request for proposals (RFP) that could potentially see the external addition of 50 megawatts to be added to the grid.

Meanwhile, the 165 megawatts to be generated through the ground-breaking Amaila Falls Hydro project, which was scuttled by Patterson and others under the coalition administration, is coming back on stream shortly.
This will be supplemented by 300 megawatts of power from the Wales Gas-to-Energy project, which will be a game-changer for Guyana and its people.

“While David Patterson continues his struggle for relevance with smokescreens and veiled attempts to reconstruct his disastrous legacy, our government is putting the pieces back together to rescue our citizens from every last one of the albatrosses placed around their necks by the APNU+AFC’s mismanagement,” the Prime Minister said.