Residents of West Berbice have been experiencing a spate of blackouts in recent days and became worried when it started again around 1 am yesterday with power being restored about 15 hours later.
Many persons felt that yesterday’s prolonged outage was as a result of kites getting entangled in the electrical wires.
They were also distressed that they were not able to access water because the service of the Guyana Water Inc. was also disrupted.
Contacted, manager of the Berbice branch of the Guyana Power & Light, Ayube Bacchus told Stabroek News that it had nothing to do with kites.
He said the company was experiencing problems with the transmission line and was unable to supply power from the Canefield power station to the branch at Onverwagt, West Berbice.
Residents in some areas got power back around 1:30 pm and experienced a short blackout again at 5 pm while in other areas it was restored fully at 4 pm.
Meanwhile, services at the Fort Wellington Hospital were severely disrupted and staff said they had to use lamps to perform their duties during the wee hours. They said the generator at the hospital is “50 years old” and is out of order.
They said too that they were unable to do x-rays, certain lab tests as well as dressing since the equipment could not be sterilized. They could not access water, air-conditioning and fans.
On Saturday the power was disconnected for several hours and in previous days the outage lasted a few hours. This problem has also been affecting residents throughout Berbice and they complained that their lives have been disrupted. They called on GPL to rectify the problem speedily.
Bacchus explained that the previous blackouts were as a result of a faulty generator which has since been fixed. He assured that the power failures would be reduced significantly.
In a report in December, Bacchus had told this newspaper that the blackouts could not have been avoided because of a problem with the switch gear.
