Dear Editor,
Reference is made to the letter published in Stabroek News January 21, edition, under the headline ‘East Mahaicony being asked to fund materials, labour, transportation in order to get connected to GPL’, written by S Chester.
While the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, under which the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) falls, understands the concerns raised by the author, please note that, as per the company’s “capital works” procedure, customers are required to pay a “capital contribution” in areas where there is no network.
According to GPL’s Procedure for Capital Works (Line Hardware, including Transformers), a customer must first visit a commercial office and make an application. If the request is above 60 ampere for those premises, Customer Service sends the request to System Planning and Design Department (SP&D) for possible capital works.
From there, SP&D will determine whether a capital contribution is required from the customer and also alert the Customer Services Division. SP&D will then produce a network and attach the design associated cost (Capital Contributions). This information is then shared with Commercial Services for further communication with the applicant. Commercial Services will process the capital contributions if applicable and proceed to request the execution of the network.
It is often advised that residents of an area come together for the payment of the Capital Contributions since, ultimately, the entire community would benefit.
Additionally, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure would like to apologise to the letter writer if, indeed, attempts to have dialogue with Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson, have been unsuccessful. While the Ministry has days set aside for interactions with members of the public due to the understanding of the importance of listening to the concerns of the citizenry, unfortunately not everyone can be accommodated in a single day or even two.
Therefore, the Ministry extends an invitation to the letter writer to visit on the next public day and indicate his/her presence if further clarifications are needed on GPL’s current procedure.
Yours faithfully,
Desilon Daniels
Public Relations Officer
Ministry of Public
Infrastructure
