The Guyana Power and Light (GPL), remains in the dark on the costs for the rental of the powership from Qatari company, UCC, but President Irfaan Ali yesterday said that the vessel will leave Cuba today for Guyana.
Despite Ali telling reporters yesterday that GPL will have more information relating to deal, efforts to contact GPL’s Management Committee Head, Kesh Nandlall, were yesterday met with messages that he would return a call. However, up press time, he had not done so.
Ali, however, said that the rental agreement was feasible, given the current emergency faced by citizens on the coast in relation to power supply that has seen a series of blackouts over the past weeks.
“You want blackouts? This is the problem with the media. You love writing headlines…that ‘Blackout!’ [and] oh, power outages!…’ The media has responsibilities too, my dear. We said to you that there are a number of problems. One of them is capacity. The exponential growth and the lack of capacity. How do you get capacity? You have to buy capacity. You can’t wish that capacity will come and that the problem will be solved. You have to buy capacity. The question you should ask is, should we not charge the persons that blocked the Amaila Falls? Otherwise we would not need to buy this capacity” Ali contended.
On Friday, Ali announced that Cuba will assist with engineers to help manage GPL’s electricity system, as an agreement was signed with Qatari power company, UCC Holdings, which has a strategic alliance in Latin America for the Turkish Karpower ship.
“They have very skilled technical personnel who they are willing to deploy immediately to work in the system and to help us technically,” he said on Friday, following a meeting with Cuban Ambassador to Guyana, Jorge Francisco Soberon Luis, as he announced that Havana pledged to have 10 engineers urgently dispatched here.
Ali said that many times, government has sought local engineers but has “not been able to do that due to the demand for engineers.”
The President also clarified that the agreement for emergency generation to be supplied by the Turkish Karpowership will be signed with the Qatari power company, UCC, which holds strategic alliance in Latin America with the power generation vessel’s company. UCC is also behind the proposed hotel on Carifesta Avenue.
As GPL’s consumers across the country continue to grapple with the nearly daily blackouts, it was Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo who on Thursday announced that government was close to sealing a two-year deal for 36 megawatts from a ship to help offset peak demand.
