Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon said that the power situation is being remedied with efforts to return malfunctioning equipment to serviceability and securing the necessary emergency freighting of fuel from suppliers.
Hosting his weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President yesterday, he said the recent spate of power outages in the Demerara and Berbice grids can be traced to frequent equipment failure, transmission interruptions and unmet projected demands of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL).
“There has been impressive growth in demand for electricity. The consumer base has expanded due to the Government of Guyana implementing the very necessary Unserved Areas Electrification Programme (UAEP), created to bring electricity to communities in areas that are not in receipt,” Dr Luncheon said yesterday.
He said implementing the plan called for increased generation that has failed to keep pace with demands.
“Additionally, the schedules for rehabilitation and maintenance of systems and equipment have often been negatively affected by delays.”
He said that recently, hiccups in the delivery of fuel have occurred contributing further to the developing situation of inadequate power generation.
Luncheon confirmed that because of the conversion to the use of fuel oil and the need for companies to be compliant, the government decided that the Guyana Oil Company would not be the procuring entity for the power company’s fuel needs.
He had been asked when it was that government knew that the state-owned Guyoil was relieved of the contract to supply fuel to the utility.
President Bharrat Jagdeo recently removed Chairman of GPL Ronald Alli and sent Head of the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA) Joseph O’Lall on administrative leave for the recent events at the power company regarding the acquisition of fuel.
