GPL’s management to be further strengthed, more Structural reforms underway – VP
Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo said that the Guyana Power and Light Incorporated, (GPL), is slated to benefit from more advanced reforms and a further strengthed management team to its improve efficiency and service to it’s Guyanese public.
If reelected to office, these structural reforms and changes will take effect come September.
Speaking with reporters at Freedom House on Thursday, Dr Jagdeo said the utility must be overhauled to deliver on the administration’s massive energy transformation plans.
The government has crafted a comprehensive plan to overhaul the energy sector, with the landmark Gas-to-Energy project being developed in Wales, Region Three set to produce 300 megawatts of power.
The vice president said that the government will work to resume the hydropower project and build a steel-tower transmission grid to connect Berbice, Linden, and Parika.
Additionally, a nationwide replacement of ageing lines and transformers, along with new circuit systems for redundancy, is ongoing. Earlier this year, the government inked US$422.2 million in contracts for the construction of electrical transmission lines along the eastern corridor of the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS).
A high-tech control centre at Eccles is being developed to instantly spot outages and dispatch crews without waiting for customer reports.
And so, “It would be stupid of us to put in all of this investment and not strengthen the management and the capability of GPL to manage the process,” he said in response to a question posed by a reporter.
He admitted fraustration with GPL’s performance, saying he’s “tired” of hearing excuses. Some outages, he explained, were deliberate to facilitate road and transmission works, but others have fueled speculation of political sabotage.
“A lot of our supporters say, ‘Why is all of this happening just before the election?’ It could be sabotage by some people. I don’t want to believe that,” he noted.