After more than four months without electricity, power is expected to be restored in the community of Matthews Ridge, Region One, today.
This is according to the Regional Chairman of Region One, Brentnol Ashley.
On Monday, Ashley along with his vice-chairman, Sarah Browne, reported to Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill that Mathews Ridge had been without electricity since March, 2020. After learning of this, the Minister assured Ashley and Browne that action would be taken to resolve the matter as soon as possible.
According to a release by the Ministry, Edghill instructed his team at the Hinterland Electrification Company Inc to make contact with the engineers/mechanics on the ground to solve the issue.
During a telephone interview with Stabroek News yesterday, Ashley said that the two generator sets that power the community have been down since March 28th. He said that the first generator was donated to the community in 2004 while the other was donated prior to the 2015 elections.
He added that when the generators stopped working, they approached the relevant authorities numerous times requesting assistance to fix them. However, he said they were told that because of the coronavirus disease pandemic that nothing could be done. He added that they were also told that the mechanic did not want to travel to the community to fix the generators despite constant pleading by residents.
Ashley noted that the lack of electricity in the community had been very frustrating for the residents of Matthews Ridge especially those who do not have their own generators or solar panels.
He stated that he visited Matthews Ridge on Tuesday and the mechanic had already arrived and had begun fixing the generators. He said that he was assured that power will be restored by today, at the latest.
“The generator sets were not fixed until now, since there was some intervention coming from the office of the Regional Chairman and from Minister Edghill in Public Works. But now we have seen movement to have that issue resolved so electricity can be restored,” he said.
According to Ashley the lack of electricity did not affect other utilities in the community.
