After residents of Grant Sand Road, Soesdyke publicised the constant blackouts that had been plaguing them for months, an uninterrupted power supply has been restored to the area.
Residents of the Soesdyke community told Stabroek News on Thursday that electricity had been available to them since Sunday, a day after an article appeared in this newspaper highlighting their plight.
One woman explained that on Sunday at about 7pm, a Guyana Power and Light (GPL) vehicle arrived in the area with two young men.
The woman added that the residents immediately came out of their homes and confronted the men.
“Everyone who had meter, we came out and protest. We tell them that as long as they don’t put on the lights, they can’t leave here,” the woman recounted.
She said one of the men went up a utility pole and was up there for about two minutes when electricity began to return to the homes.
“It was such a simple problem to fix; all they came and do was reconnect a wire and that was it. It was less than two minutes,” she emphasised. Since then, the area has experienced no blackouts.
Another resident expressed disappointment that action was only taken after residents became frustrated and highlighted the situation in the media.
“Probably, if we hadn’t gone to the media with this, we woulda still deh in darkness right now,” the resident said.
Some persons are counting their losses after several appliances went bad due to the intermittent electricity supply before.
Nonetheless, many residents were satisfied with the solution and said it was “a long time coming.”
“We feel great and we’re happy that we got back the current,” one man said.
He went on, “The children are much more relieved and for that alone we’re thankful that this problem has been dealt with.”
The residents are hopeful that there won’t be a reoccurrence. If so, one of them said, “We have planned that if this happens again we will take it further. If we have to go into the streets of Georgetown, we’ll have to do that because it’s really hard dealing with this.”
Meanwhile, they are yet to hear word on what will happen to those persons who had been accused by GPL of stealing electricity.
“We asked about it but they just told us they don’t deal with that,” one woman relayed.
About 16 households at Grant Sand Road had been suffering for months from constant blackouts and the problem worsened as the Christmas season approached. Residents had previously told Stabroek News that their holiday celebrations had been bleak because they had not only been in darkness but had been forced to throw out much of their food.
GPL had reportedly indicated that the issue arose because of known electricity theft in the area.
