The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has received 715 complaints in 2019 from consumers who have expressed their wanton dissatisfaction with the services they received from various utility companies in Guyana.
Topping the list of complaints were the Guyana Telephone Telegraph Company (GTT) and the Guyana Power and Light (GPL).
Public Utilities Commission Chair Dela Britton
Out of the 715 complaints received last year, only four came from the county of Essequibo. This is according to the PUC’s Complaints Division Manager, Destra Bourne.
“For the year of 2019, we have received 363 complaints against GTT, 262 complaints against GPL, 86 complaints against GWI and four complaints against Digicel,” Bourne explained.
She posited that some of these complaints are still pending a resolution.
Complaints Manager Destra Bourne
“Each complaint, we deem it to be important, so we try to resolve those issues in the shortest time possible,” Bourne said.
PUC Chair Dela Britton told the media that the Commission receives complaints on a daily basis.
“Some of the complaints, general complaints, sweeps of complaints we deal with on a day-to-day basis would be tampering issues, application for services, billing, change of tenancy, disconnection of services, reconnection, technical issues, transfer of services and in some instances, we have a queries desk,” Britton outlined.
As it pertains to timelines, Britton stated that when a complaint is received, it is forwarded with the required information to the utility companies, which have a certain time to respond.
“We treat every complaint no matter how [small] it might seem to the consumer, we treat every complaint as though it is the highest level because it impacts your quality of service as a consumer and it also impacts the sort of operations of the particular utility, so there is no degree of severity in an individual complaint, but they are all treated with the sort of priority and is given the same sort of scrutiny internally as to what might be perceived as a major complaint,” she underscored.
For the past couple of months, citizens have vented their concerns on social media about the services they have been receiving from GTT. Some of these issues were relating to data, MMG, among others.
PUC functions to regulate, investigate, set tariffs, and improve development and expansion plans for utility companies and their consumers. These companies include GT&T, Digicel, GPL, and GWI.
