Dear Editor,
Monday, 30th October 2023, I went to the GBTI ATM on Sheriff Street but it was closed. Then I went to Republic Bank’s Blue Machine in Kitty, both ATMs inside were also was down, so I gave up and came back home where I was informed by a text from GTT that the internet was down. On that day and the day before, there were numerous and prolonged blackouts apparently everywhere. Editor, I recently wrote that I don’t believe in coincidence so one can quite rightly conclude that the blackouts are causing problems to important national services like cellular, and internet banking, ATMs and indeed everywhere electronic machines are being used. The entire electrical supply in my house is on an uninterruptable power system, it switches whenever it sees low voltage or no voltage.
Editor, I can’t tell you how many times a day that thing switches from the mains to the batteries when it sees low/no voltage, I know every time it switches, it gives an alarm when it does. Overtime, almost everything I own, including my computer, has been damaged by this poor power generation. I was even forced to call GPL about my connection on Sunday night 29th October 2023, since I apparently used G$20,000 worth of power in 7 days! Editor, even GPL’s own prepaid meters are going nuts.
Recently, I saw that we bought 27 megawatts of second-hand heavy fuel generators for what some writers considered to be too much money. I thought it strange that we should be building a huge gas-to-shore power plant and someone in authority buys heavy fuel generators? Surely, flexible fuel generators would be much more appropriate in view of our long-term plans. Editor, that is called proper management. From now we must be building generating capacity which uses flex fuel generators, i.e. generators which uses natural gas and heavy fuel! All of this I endured with stoicism and patience, for which I have not been favoured by the Almighty, but which apparently comes with age.
But now I am forced to express my frustration, since the Minister, in charge of this mismanagement of our resources and which is destroying our personal and public infrastructure, says that management is not responsible, that these problems, he tells us “are way beyond their control!” That vehicles are destroying the poles which conduct the electricity… really minister? How come the cars/trucks in Trinidad and Barbados, not to mention the US, where I visit often and which I have never seen a blackout, are not destroying electrical poles?
Nothing disrupts foreign investment in any country like high costs and unreliable electrical supply. Normally, any excuse that problems are “beyond management’s control” is a cry from an incompetent management team for their own inability to plan and cope with whatever they are managing. Since someone/something is to blame for this situation, if the direct management of GPL is not to blame, then the planners of its functioning, the government, are to be blamed. One means that the staff at GPL must be disciplined.
Sincerely,
Tony Vieira