As citizens, fed up with blackouts, continue to vent frustration, the government has told the country’s power supplier GPL to immediately move ahead with plans to buy electricity from private generators.
It’s not a new plan. Last September, when GPL was recording an average of eight blackouts a day for customers in Demerara and Berbice, it said it was ready to buy electricity from private generators, starting with the Giftland Mall. But this did not materialize.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Phillips and Minister within the Ministry of Works Deodat Indar visited the headquarters of GPL to meet with its management.
“In the short term, and the most important concern for the people of Guyana right now is having reliable electricity and a reduction or zero power outages,” Said Brigadier Phillips.
“And I have already passed directions to the Chief Executive Officer to ensure that from now to the end of 2020 and into the first quarter of 2021 all steps must be taken to ensure that we have reliable electricity in Guyana and a reduction in power outages,” the Prime Minister told reporters.
As a result, he said that GPL will put out a call for private generators of electricity to express interest in supplying electricity to GPL to complement what is being supplied by GPL and that in the immediate term will help to curb blackouts in Guyana.
Albert Gordon, the Chief Executive Officer of GPL, said GPL is in need of “firm capacity” to address blackouts.
“The old units (generating sets) are beginning to fail us; we’ve been pushing them,” he told reporters.
He said units which provide 60 megawatts of electricity are due for retirement in a year or two.
