Jagdeo peeved at constant blackouts

Citizens have taken to social media over the past weeks to complain about incessant power outages across the country.

On Thursday at a press conference at his Church Street, Queenstown, Georgetown office, Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo joined the list of persons to express his frustration with the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) and by extension, the Government’s inability to fix the problem.

“Blackout is raging,” he said, adding that “every single day, I live on the East Coast…sometimes two-three times a day, we have blackout and sometimes it lasts for several hours.”

Visibly peeved at the issue, Jagdeo, who resides in Pradoville, Sparendaam, East Coast Demerara (ECD), noted that there is no plan to fix the cause of the problem.

“If they had a few blackouts and the Government said we’re planning to fix this because we have new generator sets coming and we’re going to do this…for the interconnected grid, there is no new power generation facility being put in place,” Jagdeo said.

He pointed out that the country is close to a peak demand period, and the older generator sets are being placed under strain.

“This can only get worse,” he said.

“We’re in the 21st century now, we should at least end that and have enough capacity in the system to address this,” the Opposition Leader said.

He reminded that the Government promised to end blackouts when it was elected to office in 2015.

A check of the GPL’s Facebook page shows advisories for service interruptions for different parts of the country every day from April 23.

On April 25, the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) experienced a total shut down.

On April 26, at approximately 13:35 hrs, the system again experienced a shutdown due to a fault on a circuit breaker at the Garden of Eden Power Plant which caused a “lockout” of the busbar facilitating the transfer of power from four generators.