Regional Chairman for Region Ten, Sharma Solomon has said that he has not been given a thorough explanation for the more than two days of electricity outage in Linden that occurred last week.
Speaking at a press conference in his office on Thursday, Solomon said that Bosai’s General Manager and the Public Relations Officer are out of the country. Conse-quently, he has not been able to speak to anyone in relation to the electrical outages.
Linden’s power is supplied by the Chinese bauxite miner, Bosai
He said that he spoke to the Secretary of the Bosai Board, Norman McLean, who in a general overview said it is a very technical problem in relation to “power moving from the power plant to the substation for distribution” and that there was hope that the problem would be fixed completely
Solomon added that the Region’s officials had been consulting with Horace James, CEO of the Linmine Secretariat, on the matter since he had been identified as the person to spearhead an electricity disruption manual at a meeting that was held last May when there was a similar breakdown in electricity generation that lasted for more than three days.
Solomon said a stakeholders’ meeting was held after the prolonged electrical outage in May last year and at that meeting it was decided that a manual would have been prepared in which the various agencies would have indicated clearly to the residents how they would have responded to a sudden large scale electrical breakdown such as the one that occurred in Linden from Wednesday mid-afternoon.
The unexpected electrical outage resulted in many complaints within the community of spoilage of meat and vegetables as well as electrical damage to household effects.
According to Solomon, all the stakeholders had been asked to prepare a strategy to be implemented by them in the event of five hours or more of electrical outages so that residents are aware of the information relating to the cause of the power cuts as well as what form of rationing, if any, of electricity supply would be implemented.
Highlighting that the collective Electricity Dis-ruption Response Manual should have been completed by last Septem-ber, the Regional Chair-man said that members of the RDC had made a call at its first statutory meeting for the year on Thursday for the reactivation of it.
He said the Region expects to have more cooperation from Bosai since the expatriate Chinese bauxite mining company that operates in Linden is the sole generator of electricity in Linden and provides electricity to the Linden Electricity Inc. and the Linden Utility Services Cooperative Society Limited (LUSCSL) – the two agencies that respectively sell electricity on the east and west bank of the town.
Noting that an agency such as the Guyana Water Inc. should indicate for public information in the Electricity Disruption Response Manual, its strategy of water distribution after the blackout would have exceeded a certain time, Solomon said: “The police will say without giving specific details how they will increase security in vulnerable areas while other entities such as the Chamber of Commerce, the Regional Democratic Council and the municipality will say how they will provide services in the event of continued blackout.”
Solomon said the stakeholders will meet on January 23rd to finalize the Electricity Disruption Response Manual.
