End to blackouts certainly not around the corner

Dear Editor,
Power outages or put more popularly ‘blackouts’ have long become part of the Guyanese national psyche.
For years now, Guyanese have lived with blackouts to the extent that they have developed a physical, material, spiritual and psychological sense of both depreciation adaptation to power outages and its socio-economic consequences on their everyday life and livelihoods.
Robert Badal, Chairman of the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL), in an interview in late November 2017, made a gallant effort to explain away the spate of lengthy power outages the nation continues to experience on a daily basis. Badal, while pointing to GPL’s obsolete physical infrastructure, technical challenges and human resource shortcomings failed to recognise the underlying impact of these deficiencies on people’s daily lives and their long-term social psychological implications for the nation as a whole.
Nowadays, with cheap Chinese manufactured electronic items available to many low-income families and with many middle-income families improving their economic standing, along with the opening up of new housing schemes during the 23 years of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration, these developments cumulatively have resulted in our increasing dependency on interrupted power supply.
The demand for electricity has grown exponentially and it will continue to grow throughout the country, but more particularly, in the coastland areas.
From all indications however, it appears that Guyanese will not, for the longest while, ever experience stable and sustained supply of electricity much less at a cheaper price. The end to blackouts is certainly not around the corner. We still have a very far way to go.
Regrettably, before 1992, during the People’s National Congress dictatorship, after 1992 during the PPP/C Administration and now with the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change in office, none of these Governments, despite their best efforts, have been able to take Guyana out from the blackout syndrome.
Whenever blackouts occur, the vulnerabilities of our country are brought to the forefront. Compounding the problem further, is the increasing urbanisation of the coastland as well as the changing demographics in the country as a whole.
With blackouts come spoilt food, incapacitated security systems and petrol stations, downtime at cybercrime units, computerised Government departments and airline offices. Such eventualities could result in food poisoning, identity fraud and theft, high incidences of crime especially break and enter and larceny, as well as a halt to the production process.
Badal and the Board of Directors of GPL can be deemed as woefully lacking in their appreciation of the psychological impact of power outages on various classes and social strata of the Guyanese citizenry. Badal missed the mark even though he grudgingly confessed in his interview that “the company’s customer service in all its aspects has been found wanting”.
The occurrence of a blackout while a patient is on an operating table and the non-availability of stable and continuing power supply providing light so, critical for the surgeon and his team, can result in the death of the patient.
In Guyana, there is absolutely no information about deaths occurring under such circumstances. That does not mean it never happened.
Compounding the problem further is the fact that of recent, GPL’s power outages, known to last for as long as eight to nine hours, a length of time that would put any standby generator under tremendous pressure.
But the impact of power outages on the health sector is only one of its many devastating manifestations.
GPL’s thread-worn narratives to assuage the collective pain and suffering of Guyanese, viewed in the context of social psychology is misplaced.
The sum total of the Guyanese people’s collective emotions, will, habits and traditions under the extant socio-economic conditions have, cumulatively, rejected GPL’s palliatives as insufficient and unsatisfactory.
Guyanese are of the view that these palliatives have not and will not suffice so long as power outages/blackouts sponsored by GPL continue to wreak havoc in the personal and collective lives of every Guyanese man, woman and child.

Yours sincerely,
Clement J Rohee