Dear Editor,
I had promised myself that in view of the holidays, and the goodwill it raises in almost all of us, that I would rest my keyboard until next year. It was not to be. Editor, when Desmond Hoyte (HDH) launched his Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) in 1988, his first act was to privatize everything which he as Minister of Finance/Economic Develop-ment realized during the roughly 19 years when he occupied those positions as to what was wrong with Guyana’s economic system, and our incompetence as a nation to correct them. Editor, long ago in College, I was taught that people obtaining independence from some imperial country, are akin to people entering the sunlight out of a very dark room: they will be blind, unable to function. Unfortunate-ly, unlike other English speaking Carib-bean nations, we had two essentially Marxist/communist leaders who divided us and whose mistakes are still haunting us even today. Blindly rushing to nationalize everything was a really bad policy.
It’s the PPP system in play: good policies, implemented properly, will prosper, but bad policies even implemented properly will have problems. This was so poignantly displayed in this country that it bears repetition. For 19 years, Hugh Desmond Hoyte was Guyana’s top economic functionary, but the policies of Burnham were bad, so the country could not progress even when implemented by HDH; but when Burnham died, HDH knew what had to be done. And the first part of the ERP was to privatize everything which Burnham had nationalized, and it was not only to be Telecommuni-cations, he wanted to privatize GPL, GuySuCo, Bauxite etc. but Dr. Jagan, still the socialist, even after the Jimmy Carter forced free elections in Guyana that gave him a chance, at last, to hold in power in this country, announced that he would not recognize any privatization if he won the 1992 election. His position was that the PNC can’t run anything, but he can.
The result is that for 32 years we have had two very large leaches on our necks, GPL and GuySuCo which our politicians have ruined, not to mention the other broken, dysfunctional system we call a government, making our daily lives monstrously challenging. And this is why I am pounding my keyboard today; GPL has been a millstone around our necks for 32 years, not only the frequency of blackouts, but the damage that monstrosity is wreaking on the electronic equipment and components of all Guyanese. And the cost! Not only because of its totally ridiculous generation costs, but the cost to our personal property, which it is damaging. Within less than two months, GPL and what they are bold enough to call electricity, have destroyed, for me alone, at least 3 Linksys wireless routers, two powered subwoofers, one Sony audio amplifier, one gas powered hot water heater, my microwave and my whirlpool clothes dryer.
One afternoon, I recorded on my phone, audio and video of the way the power was coming in to my house. I have two 110 lines, the power in the two lines for the duration of the recording of 4 minutes was never the same with variations of at least a dozen times, and a difference between line 1 and line 2 of as much as 10 to 13 volts from 136 to 122. This went on for nearly 10 or 12 minutes, and every day when these incompetents are switching from one generator plant to another, there are very long periods of such voltage disturbances, until the they manage to get some semblance of balance between the two lines. At one time within that 4 minutes the two lines were producing at nearly 270 volts instead of 220 Volts. Blackout is very inconvenient, but this is much, much worse. They are destroying our property and there is basically no proper functioning Public Utilities Commission to which we can turn! It’s inevitable, a government appointed body cannot be a proper regulating agency for a government owned corporation.
Sincerely,
Tony Vieira
