Dear Editor,
Frequent power outages over the past few months as often as twice a day, have been affecting citizens in sections of the East Coast.
Many of us are absolutely disgusted with this daily on and off nuisance, and as such, we are pleading with the officials at the Guyana Power and Light to rectify this once and for all.
The blackouts have damaged many of our appliances, and for the business operators here, the noise created by the generators at their stores has not been inviting to customers. These outages have been occurring at irregular intervals; has GPL given thought to consumers’ appliances?
The “24 hour Customer Care Service” has proven to be useless, with rude and unethical agents, but most of the time the calls go unanswered. There are three numbers provided, yet usually no agent is available to take the call. When asked what causes the outages at 12am, these agents have the nerve to say “maintenance,” but who does maintenance at 12-1 am?
We ask that just as we are requested to pay our GPL bills on time, we should be provided with steady power as monthly, we invest thousands of dollars on this. Additionally, as an irate citizen (one of many) I would like to remind GPL that this service is not given to us free as a charitable act; we struggle monthly to pay the ridiculously high bills which are sent to us one or two days before the due date. As such we deserve to be treated better. As paying customers, we pay these bills on time every time to keep the power in our homes, so how fair is it that because of a substandard service we must suffer and lose appliances and comfort?
Since it is our money that runs the majority of the operations there, as a citizen, I have the right to demand a better service from GPL – steady power and better treatment as a customer. It is difficult when we have blackouts from 8pm lasting to 10 am next day. This routine needs to be reviewed, and whatever the cause of these outages is, it must be fixed instantly.
The areas most affected include Mon Repos, Good Hope, Lusignan, Annandale, Buxton and Friendship.
Yours faithfully,
Waveney Braithwaite
