Dear Editor,
Guyana Power and Light’s (GPL) imminent outsourcing of transmission and distribution major maintenance is of great concern to employees of the transmission and distribution department. I take special interest in this because I could be one of the employees without a job while the management of GPL has not been able to prove to us the employees that the contractors are going to do the same jobs in a more cost effective manner.
I was fortunate to enter the company as an apprentice with CXC subjects and I’m now a line journeyman. During the year 2006 our department completed six Government of Guyana electrification projects and carried out major transmission line maintenance, thus maintaining a reliable supply to our consumers.
At one of our department monthly meetings the engineer mentioned to us that it is cheaper for the contractors to do the work and therefore management is considering outsourcing. This statement triggered a debate between the engineer, our union representative and line superintendent. The union representative and the line superintendent claimed that the contractors are erecting a new distribution network which is much easier than doing maintenance exercises on existing networks. As I listened to the debate it left me with many unanswered questions. Some of these are:
1. Has the management of GPL compared the maintenance cost of the contractors and that of the company, or is our management making the mistake of comparing the project cost of erecting a new network to that of maintaining an old network? If the latter is possible then GPL management may have another reason why it is moving in the direction of outsourcing and severing of employees. Let’s hope that the reason is genuine.
2. Our department has completed the largest set of projects even when compared with the contractors and therefore there is enough information to tell us the cost at which it was done and if it was done below the cost of the contractors. If the department had done these projects below the cost of the contractors then we the employees are entitled to some form of incentive. If this is so them more credit must be given to the department and let us further improve on our management techniques.
3. Why did management never look at restricting and retooling the department but will be moving to sever employees? To achieve the outsourcing of transmission and distribution maintenance our management is looking at downsizing the T&D department which means that employees will be severed and jobs will be lost. This could lead to the theft of electricity.
If and when GPL downsizes the T&D department to a capacity that it cannot carry out major line maintenance the contractors will hold the company to ransom. Within a year these contractors will dictate the cost of doing the line maintenance and it will be the consumer who will feel the effects either by longer disruption of electricity supply or an increase in tariffs to meet the many contractors’ overheads. The issuing of these contracts will also be of concern since it opens another avenue for corrupt transactions at the top. Please remember the millions of dollars lost from the Commercial Sales department and not one senior officer was disciplined for this form of incompetence.
4. I learnt from our company’s development plan which was on my superintendent’s desk that our company is expected to outsource revenue collection.
I doubt the present management will be interested in outsourcing this area of our company’s operation. The main reason for this is that GPL is a government entity and knowing how our government behaves, it will never agree to such reckless recommendations of the directors who were in control before the management team from Ireland (ESBI) had taken over the company in 1999. It was the ESBI team that brought back our electricity company after the previous management failed to run it efficiently.
5. In 2004 our management had declared a profit of $400,000,000 and I now wonder how much went towards retooling. I also feel that this money earned was as a result of the changes the ESBI management team made.
In T&D cost was cut significantly since weekend overtime work was reduced and all T&D employees had less to take home.
6. All Guyana is aware of our government’s untiring effort to arrive at a favourable agreement between Guyana and the European Union when it looked as though it was doomsday for our sugar industry. This agreement helped to protect the jobs of sugar workers and therefore we at GP&L are asking for the government to delay the severing of T&D employees and look at redeploying these employees in our departments. Some of my fellow linesmen could be redeployed in the commercial department to disconnect and reconnect supply so the employment of temporary technicians to do this job would not be necessary.
These temporary technicians are re-employed every three or six months.
Our company also boasts of being an equal opportunity employer and here we have two different sets of employees doing the same work with different employment conditions. I’m very sorry for these young technicians who are not entitled to a pension or even to become members of our credit union.
Yours faithfully,
(name and address
supplied)