Dear Editor,
For the past week Essequibians have been experiencing 12-hour blackouts daily ‒ 6 hours in the morning and 6 hours at night. No one knows for sure what is the cause of these sudden power outages; people are speculating that the 2 Wartsila engines are too old and cannot carry the load of the entire region. It seems like there is no turning back; it’s getting from bad to worse. When the power is off the children who are attending school cannot get water to bathe and study at night. Worst of all, you cannot see to eat your own food at night when you come home late from work.
This is really unacceptable; in the wee hours of the morning our family cannot see to prepare our meals so we go to work without food. The little babies are suffering with the heat and mosquitoes because there is no electricity to power fans or air conditioners. A lot of damage has been done to appliances when the current fluctuates; my back-up battery which I am using to store power so I can use my internet and telephone when there are blackouts, blew up and caught fire. Luckily I had my fire extinguisher nearby and I quickly put it out.
With these sudden blackouts and fluctuations of power our houses can burn to the ground, and something urgently needs to be done. Owing to the on-and-off power over the past week our transmitting systems at the National Communications Network on the Essequibo Coast went down. We were unable to transmit our usual television programmes to the populace here and in the interior locations. The engineers and technicians from Georgetown had to rush up to Cotton Field, and at our branch they worked assiduously throughout the night to restore the service. Much damage had been done to the motherboard of the panel.
Although the transmitting system has been fully restored and is now working, there is still on-and-off power from GPL, and I am afraid that it might affect the transmitting system again.
In my opinion the only remedy to this blackout situation, is to replace these 2 old and outdated Wartsila engines with new ones. The Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson has to act quickly or else more of our appliances will be damaged and houses put at risk of fire. Already some people are looking to buy their own solar panels and standby generating sets because they cannot depend on GPL anymore.
If the government has a commitment to the working people of Essequibo, it could help us survive the GPL medicine. While the government has made some important strides, the country and the people as a whole face many barriers to progress. Perhaps the most serious impediment is the prolonged blackouts each day throughout the country. We cannot and must not take this lightly. I draw your attention to the recent revelation that the Wartsila experts will not be operating here in Guyana anymore, and I think this will be a disaster if we are to succeed in holding on to what we have.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
