Frequent blackouts from the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) have been attributed to line maintenance and network rehabilitation work that was being done during the course of the past week.
The recent power outages have been affecting communities in and around Georgetown including the city centre, South Ruimveldt and Campbellville as well as areas such as Turkeyen and Enmore among others.
An official at GPL said yesterday that maintenance work that was being carried out was the result of the power failures.
The official also added that notices of the power outages were advertised in a local newspaper and also announced on the radio so as to inform the public.
Recently, GPL has been accused of causing a number of fires that have destroyed homes because of the high voltages of power that is supplied after a power outage. On Saturday, fire destroyed the home of Winston Profitt, which was located at Surat Drive, Triumph East Coast. The Profitts believe that the fire was electrical in origin given that it started after power was restored following an outage.
When asked about this, the official said they have to wait until the investigation by the Guyana Fire Service is complete before this can be confirmed.
The lack of a stable power supply, which has been the case for decades, has been cited as the reason for the paucity of foreign direct investment in Guyana. For this year so far, Bartica was plunged into darkness in January after GPL said it was forced to disconnect a malfunctioning Caterpillar Unit to perform diagnostics and repairs.
In February, GPL had apologized for power outages that emanated from a network defect in Waterloo Street which caused a disruption of power to the cooling equipment at the 36MW Kingston power plant, causing protective devices to shut down three machines.
In March, Sophia and Bygeval’s power was disrupted due to the construction of new transmission lines. A few days later the company also issued an apology to customers for unscheduled power outages which were caused by a series of problems such as frequency conversion, transmission line and feeder issues.
Berbice has also been plagued with severe power outages for several years.
