One week after they were plunged into darkness Barticians are still enduring several hours of power outages, which have stymied business and discomfited homes even as the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) struggles to improve generation.
“You cannot plan your day because they don’t even give a schedule when who would get blackout so is like you just deh waiting on the blackout all the time… They can inconvenience you but you can’t inconvenience them. Don’t pay a bill and watch how quick the pliers man come,” a food vendor told Stabroek News yesterday.
Chairman of Region 7 Gordon Bradford said that while that the power situation had improved and GPL was working to manage it, the community was still hoping for power outage free days. “Blackouts eased a little as efforts continue by GPL to bring the situation to normalcy,” he said.
When Stabroek News contacted Acting Public Relations Officer of GPL Wadecia Donald she said she was going to get an update from relevant officials and would return a call. Up to press time she had not done so.
Chief Executive Officer of GPL Bharat Dindyal declined to comment immediately saying a comment would be given today.
Last Tuesday, the entire Bartica community was plunged into blackout owing to mechanical problems affecting one of the community’s Caterpillar units.
A press release from GPL had said the unit was taken offline on Wednesday for investigations and to have repairs done.
The company promised that the generator would have been online by 6 pm on Wednesday but this did not happen nor was a reason given.
Residents complained that from Tuesday morning straight into Thursday night there was no power in the district and many farmers and shopkeepers resorted to generators which were costly to operate.
A market vendor of Bartica, who provided her name as Angela, had told this newspaper that her business suffered losses because a large amount of poultry and seafood products had to be disposed after not being frozen.
Another shopkeeper said that she was forced to close her business and give away perishables as she did not have a generator. She said she leave her business to spend time with her family in the city until she got word that the power woes had been addressed.
“Look I so fed up. The blackout is just unbearable because you can’t use the fan and the scorching sun makes you feel sweaty and miserable.
They need to fix this problem and fix it quick because the price for gas and diesel is not same as in town either,” she said.
GPL had explained in the same press release that there was a rapid increase in demand for electricity in Bartica and that last year a third generating unit was added to supplement the two existing units.
Prior to the occurrences of Tuesday, the release said, and sections of the community were experiencing periodic power outages owing to technical difficulties with two units. As a result, the station was not able to satisfy total power demand.
