The Georgetown municipality reported yesterday that it had secured a mandatory order from the High Court to have the Guyana Power and Light Inc. reconnect the electricity supply to the municipal buildings at City Hall compound.
A release from M&CC Public Relations Officer Royston King stated that the municipality on Wednesday had secured an interim injunction with respect to the reconnection of electricity supply to its administrative offices at City Hall.
These offices include City Hall, the Treasurer’s Department, Engineer’s Department, Personnel Section, Public Relations Section, City Constabulary, Office of the Mayor and Deputy Mayor, and the Information Technology and Legal Section.
According to the release, the council took this approach “in the interest of citizens and its employees,” since the absence of electricity was extremely difficult for the staff and also affected the ability of the municipality to deliver various services to the public.
Late last year GPL had disconnected electricity from a number of municipal buildings and facilities but power was subsequently reconnected to some of them with the particular exception of the council’s main administrative buildings.
The council then sought to negotiate with the power company and subsequently got the Public Utilities Commission to intervene and an agreement was formulated on the way forward to resolve the matter.
Part of that agreement was an exchange of cheques by both entities, the reconnection of power to City Hall and the submission of a payment plan for monies claimed by the company, based on the system of estimation for street lights.
In the meantime, the release noted, the council is conducting a verification process to determine the actual number of street lights that are working.
According to the release, GPL paid a sum of $179,498,876 representing rates due and payable up to December 2009. And these were set off against a number of properties, all of which GPL agreed to including those from the GEC period but excluding properties at Kingston, Georgetown, on which GPL has built its 20.7 MV power plant, and the council will in due course invoice GPL for this.
The council in turn, the release added, paid off an equivalent amount representing all installations metered and submitted by way of bills to the Mayor and City Council. The remaining amount of $22,976, 294 was paid towards street lighting although “it was accepted that at this stage street lighting cost was being dealt with separately to allow for proper verification,” the release said.
However, the power company did not reconnect the electricity to the buildings in City Hall compound although letters were dispatched to the appropriate agencies and GPL to have the power reconnected.
As a result the council sought and obtained an interim injunction to have GPL reconnect the supply of electricity to its municipal buildings, the release concluded.
