On Court order…
THE City Hall complex, nerve centre of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) of Georgetown operations, has had its electricity supply restored by Guyana Power & Light (GPL).

The reconnection took place last Thursday, following a High Court order that was secured by the municipality.

An M&CC release said the Council is continuing its verification process to ascertain the number of functioning street lamps in the capital.

The release said the Council obtained an interim injunction for its administrative offices, including the Treasurer’s Department, Personnel Section, Engineer’s Department, Public Relations Section, City Constabulary, Information Technology Division and the offices of the Mayor and Deputy, to be reconnected.

Late last year, GPL disconnected its current from a number of municipal locations and facilities, some of which were later repowered but the main administrative buildings were not.

The release noted that assistance of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) was sought and the intervention facilitated an agreement between the two parties on the way forward.

The statement said part of that arrangement included an exchange of cheques by both entities, the repowering of City Hall and the submission of a payment plan for monies claimed by the utility, based on the system of estimation foe street lighting.

It said GPL paid a sum of $179,498,876, representing rates due and payable up to December 2009 and these were set off against a number of properties, all to which GPL agreed, among them for the now defunct Guyana Electricity Corporation (GEC) but excluding at Kingston, where GPL has built its 20.7 megawatts power plant, for which the Council will issue an invoice in due course.

The statement continued that the Council, in turn, paid an equivalent amount, representing for all installations metered and submitted by way of bills to M&CC.

The remaining amount was paid towards street lighting, even though it was accepted that, at this stage, the cost was being dealt with separately to allow for proper verification, the statement said.

It added that GPL did not reconnect the electricity to the buildings in the City Hall compound, causing the Council’s move to the Court.