Dear Editor,
Prime Minister Hinds responded to my question in the National Assembly about the high electricity rates, but nowhere in that response did I see a glimmer of hope as to when the rate paid by our poor people and our struggling commercial and manufacturing sectors will be reduced to a level which they can afford. It is currently 30 US cents per kilowatt hour (commercial rate) when everywhere else with populations close to ours it is about one third less. In small islands in the Caribbean or elsewhere, which this government likes to quote as examples of high costs for electricity, it happens mostly because the employees get huge salaries and the law of diminishing returns dictates that the rate will be high.
In the Cayman Islands, for example, the population is only around 47,000, so this makes the comparison with Guyana which has 750,000 people invalid. More people means more generation and less cost per kilowatt. Of course the Caymans do not have any hydropower potential which we have in abundance. Mr Editor, the cost of generating hydropower worldwide is around 1 US cent per kilowatt hour. Usually during the first 10 years after construction, when the line plant required to bring the power to the grid and the dam itself are being amortised, the cost is usually around 8-11 US cents per kilowatt hour, but after this initial 10 year period the cost drops dramatically to 3-5 cents per kwh.
We have always had the potential to generate 7500 megawatts of hydropower; our national Demerara/Berbice interconnected system only requires 100 megawatts, and everyone in this nation should hang their head in shame. What sort of leaders have we put to run our affairs who have not exploited this natural resource which costs so little and which could make us the richest rather than the poorest nation in Caricom?
Additionally, Mr Editor a GPL document in my possession informs me that at the end of 2007 the line losses at GPL were 40%; Mr Hinds says the losses have been reduced to 33.4%.
Mr Editor last year GP&L bought 17 billion dollars worth of fuel to run the company, if we have a 40% line loss then we wasted 40% of 17 billion dollars or 6.8 billion dollars, nearly 7% of our national budget in fuel alone and foreign exchange, which served no one! If Mr Hinds’ figure is right and the losses are in fact 33% then we spent 33% of 17 billion dollars or 5.61 billion dollars purchasing fuel which served no one, more than 5% of the national budget, a loss which we can ill afford.
In 1999 when GPL was formed to accommodate the private investor, the contract establishing the new entity was required to reduce the line losses to 16 per cent by 2004.
Now the Prime Minister is saying that the new date for bringing down the losses to these manageable levels is 2012! Really Mr Editor is this acceptable?
GPL must be totally privatised and the PUC must be allowed to do its job on behalf of the nation to regulate the electricity rate at a level consistent with good sense and affordability, or this nation will plunge even deeper into economic crisis.
Isn’t it ridiculous that a government which owns a public utility, which is a monopoly, and which called on its citizens to invest with it in the power sector obtained no response? Did no one have enough confidence in them to put their money into Power and Light? Has the significance of this nation’s lack of confidence in his government’s ability to run Guyana Power and Light efficiently escaped Mr Hinds?
Isn’t it also ridiculous that a government which owns a public electricity utility is encouraging industry to get duty free diesel generators to generate their own power to relieve the pressure on the national grid, so that blackouts would not be as frequent or widespread. This would be at crushing cost to them, in view of the rising cost of diesel.
Mr Hinds must pay attention to these facts, because we as a nation cannot develop with this high cost for electrical power, and it is costing jobs and it is causing businesses to fail and most importantly it is wasting our national income financing these losses, not to mention the effects on the consumer who ends up paying for the losses.
Finally, Mr Editor, I have a comment on another issue currently being discussed in the nation: if a substantial proportion of the people in this country believe that the only place they can go to get justice is on the streets, then that is where they will go. It is self evident to me, so I don’t comprehend why others do not understand it. Even those who do not support it must understand it, and do what they can to change the situation so that it does not become necessary.
Yours faithfully,
Anthony Vieira
