Dear Editor,
In recent months, things have gone downhill at the GPL at an alarming and unacceptable pace. This is specifically with regard to the spate of blackouts afflicting citizens across large sections of the country. What is responsible?
Editor, I start by using a reference framework of just over four years, almost the time since I have returned. Let there be no mistake, there were blackouts under the previous government; many times they were lengthy. But they were not this frequent (on occasions sometimes daily), and this long (several hours each time). The standard of the old folks, if that is what it can be called, was maintained in the first year of the new administration’s ascension. Then the bottom seems to have fallen out in recent times.
In approximately the last six months, blackouts have been frequent (very frequent) and long (very long). In some areas this has almost been a daily visitation. Again the question: what has contributed to this sudden proliferation of woes at the GPL, and the acute anxieties of citizens? I table a few.
There have been visible and public changes at the top management level. There have been uncorroborated reports of ongoing changes (purges) of an unfortunate sort. There have been unconfirmed mutterings of replacements of an old kind, and of same kind. There have been releases about changes of contractual partners. There has been talk of aging and failures and gaps cascading upon the GPL and, by extension, the lives of helpless citizens.
Ready acknowledgement is registered for equipment and technology and the like being antiquated and in dire need of serious overhaul. But they were all just the same way under the old people. What went wrong so quickly, and degenerated so rapidly to the state of today?
Is it internal sabotage? Now this is something not so willingly shared by most entities with the consuming public. Thus silence could very well reign supreme. Is it that the new management team (board included) lack the wherewithal to keep things going at a satisfactory level? Perhaps, perhaps not. But going back to those earlier ‘purge’ reports, is this a major contributory factor if it is on the up and up? Cutting a real fine point on matters, if those claims are accurate, have successors injected incompetence, indifference, and indiscipline to the GPL, to the detriment of the captive public? To the sceptical, I urge reference to that old adage. It is the one where the bad workman blames his tools. In the case of the GPL, it could be that the conspiracies of comrades find convenient whipping posts in the presence of ancient generators, collapsible transmission lines, and a host of other non-performing tools and assets.
From my perspective, this blackout free-fall is simply not adding up from the official disclosures, or when the constraints of time and prior norms are pondered. I am inclined to believe that some of the related factors are manmade and of the traditionally inspired kind. It should be traceable. It is why I think that some additional exploring and sonar eavesdropping are in order. It would be interesting to see where all of this leads.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
