Dear Editor,

Stabroek News letter writer Richard Duke would like to know why the Guyana Power & Light Inc (GPL) is giving so many short recurring blackouts (‘Why so many recurring short-term blackouts?’ SN April 22). Other than scheduled line maintenance, and other mechanical works at the various power stations, I do not believe GPL deliberately shuts off power for a few seconds and then turns it back on. Weather factors such as the wind, heat, rain, etc, influence power blackouts. Other causes are machinery failure and transmission line failures as well as the generator sets ‘tripping.’ After a time, they are restarted and the area(s) is/are re-energized.

The writer did not say from which area he was writing, but I presume it was the city of Georgetown. Well, a few days after the letter was printed, there was a huge report in the newspaper about the frequent recent power blackouts in Georgetown. People complained about short frequent outages during the day.

Well what must we Berbicians say? We know we are nobodies and we do not get these explanations as we probably are not valued customers like those of Georgetown.

Berbicians too have been getting short, frequent blackouts over the past couple of days, but we’re not complaining. Personally, I prefer short frequent blackouts than a very long one, especially during the afternoon when the temperatures are so high on the coast. Of course we’d all prefer blackouts during various parts of the day more than others.

We Berbicians have no say, since we have had (my area Canje and most likely other parts of Berbice as well) twenty, yes that’s twenty blackouts during the month of April. That’s the most thus far; there were 19 in January, 19 in February and only 7 in East Berbice in March. Can Georgetown beat this record? And since we had eight blackouts so far this month, we aren’t doing too badly either for May.

Yours faithfully,
Leon Jameson Suseran