Patterson acknowledges power distribution problems
-promises solution by end of year
As intermittent blackouts continue to anger citizens, Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson has acknowledged that transmission and distribution problems persist at the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) and he promised a solution by the end of the year.
Successive governments have failed to bring a lasting end to blackouts and promises by GPL last year that extensive maintenance work would ease outages in the city have proven to be false.
Almost on a daily basis, city residents have complained about blackouts. In a Government Information Agency (GINA) report released yesterday, Patterson said GPL “has difficulty with protecting its distribution system, and this is responsible for the poor delivery of electricity.”
He stated, “we have enough generators working and power provided, but what happened is that we have a problem with the distribution of that power, and that is one of the issues we have to address with Lot A of the Power Utility Upgrade Programme.”
He said that there are many hurdles with the distribution of electricity, especially on the coast, but efforts are in place to ensure that the system is improved.
Patterson acknowledged that the power company has a lot more work to do towards achieving this goal and said that efforts will be intensified to ensure that this is feasible by the end of 2017.
He said that by the end of the year, the distribution system will be fully protected so in the event of emergencies, such as a collision from an accident or a fallen tree, the disruption will be isolated to that particular area and not affect the entire coast. “When there is an accident, the whole feedback is damaged, and every time this happens we give citizens the same excuse; we don’t want this anymore so we’re moving ahead to have this improved for the Turn to page 20