GUYANA Power & Light (GPL) yesterday inaugurated its community cased Customer Service Representative Programme and introduced three of four representatives from Berbice.
The inauguration took place in GPL’s Lot 91 Duke Street, Kingston, Georgetown boardroom, where Prime Minister Samuel Hinds was present.
In an overview of the venture, GPL Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Aeshwar Deonarine told the media the utility is on a path to recovery and, in the process, wants to improve customer service to international standards.
He said, over the past couple of years, GPL was able to commission the 20.7 megawatts Wartsila plant to improve the generation side and with a Chinese loan to better transmission, distribution and control networks.
Deonarine said another loan, from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), will see the implementation of a state-of-the-art customer information system, which is expected to arrive in the second quarter of this year, the most important amongst many initiatives.
He admitted that customers frequently complain about their enquiries taking much time to be resolved and the anticipated innovation would build an interface between them and GPL.
“We have chosen this as a pattern programme and chose people of reputable character in the relevant communities as GPL representatives to interface with customers to avoid them having to journey to the offices,” he explained.
Deonarine said the customer representatives will receive the complaints and take the process through its entirety, ensuring the problems are resolved.
He said the programme is being specially implemented to address all customers’ problems and get to the root of them, especially regarding their bills.
In this regard, Deonaraine said two call centres will open from 08:00h to 21:00 h, Mondays to Fridays and the emergency call centre is opened 24 hours, to deal with all technical difficulties, such as outages, fires, slack connections etc.
He said, in those call centres, are recording software through which the managers responsible can access and listen to the complaints voiced by complainants to the customer service representative, for quality monitoring.
“We want customers to be able to call and get assistance and the generation side of things will reduce power outages and, as we improve transmission and distribution, power outages will be minimal. But this is a network, so we can’t say it will be rectified in its totality,” Deonarine pointed out.
Goal
He said their goal is for customers to get bills that are not estimated and to truly detect their consumption and encourage use of pre-paid meters that would make it easier for them to monitor and control their usage than with post-paid meters.
Deonarine said, once the programme sees much success, GPL would install customer representatives in the existing 65 Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDC) domains.
He, however, urged people to contact their representatives, who would be available countrywide by year end.
The details of what the representative’s job were outlined by Customer Service Manager, Ms. Charlene Profitt, who said the programme is to improve customer relations and the chosen representatives must be accessible at all times, reliable and honest in carrying out their tasks.
Prime Minister Hinds told the gathering the scheme is a good one and to get closer to customers, not physically, but in terms of customer relations.
He said the five persons who are customer representatives will help reduce the losses suffered by GPL and there will be less conflicts regarding electricity bills.
Mr. Hinds lauded the efforts of GPL, remarking that it has moved a long way forward and there is, indeed, growth in the sector.
He mentioned GPL investment to boost generation and reminded that that four units at Kingston will be converted from 50 to 60 cycles shortly.
The Prime Minister disclosed that one unit is down but two are working in the conversion process that is expected to take about three months, during which time there will be a power generation loss of 11 megawatts.
He said Government is thinking of progress and hydropower is on the agenda but that has issues when there is drought.
The Prime Minister said GPL has to improve its loss reduction and alluded to collusion between employees and people who steal electricity although the utility is trying to make the theft difficult.
On the issue of pre-paid meters, he said it has new features to help consumers better manage their use and can cut consumption by between 10 and  20 per cent.