We have secured funding from multilateral financing institutions; gotten foreign technical help with both infrastructure development and improving generating capacity; placed the industry under private management then restored it to state ownership; brought in foreign consultants and initiated shakeups in the local management system……….. all to little avail. Indeed, it would be instructive to undertake an expert study of both the qualitative and the quantitative impact of inefficient electricity generation on the national psyche and on national development – the two, of course, being linked phenomena.
Over time, domestic consumers have cultivated an ill-concealed hostility to the various institutions – the most recent one being the Guyana Power and Light Company – that have been responsible for providing power; and while some of our less resilient business enterprises have been completely broken by the sheer persistence of power supply problems, the remainder have survived only because they have simply pretended that there is no national electricity supply system and established power supply systems of their own. This, of course, has required additional investment, resulted in greater production costs, higher prices for finished products and reduced competitiveness in the region and further afield.
Fuel is everything. GPL’s total annual earnings are less than its annual fuel bill. Every day the company must find around $50m to purchase fuel and the vagaries of price movements on the international oil market mean that budgeting for fuel can be decidedly unreliable.
Setting fuel aside we are told by the Chief Executive Officer of the GPL that we are – far and away – the biggest thieves of electricity in the Caribbean. “Non technical” losses, that is, losses due to one form of consumer rascality or another stands at a whopping 29 per cent. Jamaica comes closest to Guyana and their overall losses – not their losses due to power theft alone but losses that are also due to technical problems – amount to 17 per cent!
Successive incarnations of the national electricity generation entity have – more-or-less – inherited the various problems one from another. It would not, therefore, be technically correct to blame all of the present ills on the incumbent incarnation, the Guyana Power and Light Company. It would however, be fair to say that government, which has been ‘a constant’ in the various transformations that the entity has undergone over the years, and, which, at the end of the day, has the responsibility for providing the nation with electricity, has failed miserably to deliver an efficient service.
The GPL – and here one has to name the GPL since it is the incumbent – is a decidedly inefficient organization. Its inefficiencies include an existing network that distributes millions of dollars in wasted electricity, a generating system that cannot provide guarantees of sustained and reliable electricity over protracted periods and a billing system which, for want of a better way of putting it, appears to have a will of its own.
And while the GPL is never keen to admit it, sufficient evidence has been uncovered, over time, of internal corruption driven by “scams” that enable kickbacks in exchange for “fiddling” electricity charges for both domestic and commercial consumers.
The second half of the ‘ripoff’ involves consumer theft of electricity – to the tune of two and a half billion dollars annually – mostly through illegal connections and “doctored” meters and – by the admission of the company’s Chief Executive Officer – sometimes with the complicity of employees of the Company. Here again and despite its loss-reduction mechanisms GPL has not been able to do a great deal to reduce power theft.
About 300 persons are presently before the courts for power theft offences and, of course, we have heard of cases of meter scams by well-placed persons including a case that implicated a former member of the GPL’s Board of Directors which this newspaper reported on several months ago.
The problem here of course is that, whether through the slowness of the courts or through quiet “understandings”, the transgressors will be forgiven – one gets the impression that the GPL has simply not drawn a line in the sand as far as corrupt internal practices and power theft are concerned.
These chronic defects in the management of the national electricity system are worth mentioning because attempts have sometimes been made to cause us to believe that the problem stops at high fuel prices. That, quite simply, is a downright myth. While no none would deny that Guyana is a hostage to the vagaries of price movements on the global oil market, we are, perhaps no less, a hostage to scams, ripoffs and mismanagement in the electricity sector, most of which have not been the subject of full and transparent public enquiries and the attendant remedial measures.
And while the GPL says that its current tariffs remain lower than those which it can impose under its licence, those consumers who pay up – through their noses in many cases – have every right to their anger and frustration. Why? Not because they should not be paying their own electricity tariffs but because – again by the admission of the CEO – the quality of the service that they are receiving is being compromised by the fraud and the power theft that robs the company of the revenue to improve its network and its generation system.
Setting its various inefficiencies aside the GPL has been less than forthcoming about its problems, particularly those that have to do with internal corruption and power theft. And while the Chief Executive Officer is reluctant to admit this, a case can certainly be made for saying that the company’s efforts to stamp out power theft and corrupt practices appear not to take sufficient account of the sheer magnitude of the problem. If, as the CEO contends, the complete cessation of power theft would lead to a total eradication of our generation and network problems in five years, that, surely, is more than enough reason for the GPL to throw the proverbial kitchen sink at corrupt functionaries and power thieves.
What those who determine that unsavory developments within the GPL should be kept quiet or resolved internally do not appear to understand is that every time a scandal of one sort or another is uncovered only to be swept under the carpet, consumers grow more cynical about paying their own tariffs, their argument being that those who pay for the electricity that they consume subsidize those who simply steal power or otherwise profit handsomely from power theft; and here it is worth repeating that some of the power thieves are able to perpetrate these acts because they are well-placed to do so and get away with it though they are, in many instances, better placed to pay their bills than the vast majority of ordinary Guyanese who do so.
It is, in large measure, the notion that the system is corrupt, inefficient and unfair that nurtures the existing widespread dislike of GPL and this is where the decision-makers continue to compromise the image of the company. If bringing down tariffs across-the-board and improving the quality of the service depends on stopping the “scams” and bringing the power thieves to account then why is it that more emphasis is not placed on doing so and on ensuring that the public is aware that such measures are being taken and that results are being realized?
The company’s Chief Executive Officer has made a perfectly sound case for suggesting that all of GPL’s inefficiencies are not due to internal deficiencies. The problem is that, up until now, the company’s public relations and image-enhancing mechanisms have been weak and ineffective.
One suspects that if the GPL were to decide to ‘come clean’ on all of its problems it would be compelled to “give up” some of its own people who have been part of the giant scam – the combination of the kickback regime and power theft – to plunder the company; and of course there is no telling how high up this may go. In the circumstances it appears to have opted for a policy of not doing its dirty laundry in the presence of the people who matter most, the consumers, out of a fear of the consequences of the fallout.
The price that it continues to pay is to be measured, first, in an enduringly shabby image, secondly in its failure to garner the two and half billion annually without which it cannot fix its myriad problems and, thirdly, in the overall devastating economic cost of its choices. It is, to say the least, a bizarre position for those in authority to take.
