Residents of Mabaruma, Region One will soon have their own power company called the Mabaruma Power and Light (MPL) and a metering system for regularised consumption of electricity by the end of the year.
This was disclosed by Chief Executive Officer of the Hinterland Electrification Company Incorporated (HECI), Horace Williams during an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI).
Williams said that the residents are currently paying a fixed fee for electricity and with the installation of meters they will be paying for electricity based on consumption.
The community of Mabaruma currently receives nine hours of electricity per day via a generator. He noted that with the establishment of the power company, they will be working towards providing 24 hours electricity to residents.
The power company, Williams said, “will be taking over the operations of the electricity system in Mabaruma and in doing so, we want to move towards consumers paying based on consumption… so when we introduce metering systems we expect that consumers would now use electricity efficiently and conserve where possible.”
According to Williams, the power company is owned by the government and will be managed by a board of directors.
“GPL has been represented on those smaller utility boards in the past so we expect a similar arrangement for Mabaruma, of course the RDCs are represented on these boards as well and we expect that the same will happen in Mabaruma” Williams said, according to DPI.
