Power has since been restored to the border community of Lethem after being left in the dark since Wednesday.

The Region Nine (Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo) community had been without power since Wednesday night and President of the Rupununi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI) Daniel Gajie had told Stabroek News that the organization intends to take action because of what he called unacceptable silence by the power utility.

Yesterday residents told Stabroek News that power was restored on Saturday evening though intermittent outages have since occurred. Gajie had said on Thursday that non-communication between the utility and residents had been ongoing for quite sometime and said that the chamber had planned protest action when Prime Minister Samuel Hinds visited the community. He said that the chamber had written Hinds on the issue and had also visited him in his Georgetown office since it was “fed-up” with the management of the power company. He had stated that the government had approved a sum of $6M for a Caterpillar diesel engine to be repaired so that the normal supply of power could be restored and when it was returned from Brazil after some six weeks it still wasn’t put into service. Stabroek News was unable to contact either Gajie or the Management of the Lethem Power Company (LPC) yesterday though a resident said that on Friday the utility had announced through a loud hailer that the company had encountered problems and there would be no electricity until further notice. The resident expressed concern that whenever there is a problem with the power supply, the water service is also affected since it is dependent on LPC for electricity to pump the water.

Three years ago, rain and mudslides put the Moco-Moco Hydro-electricity plant out of commission and since then power in the community has been problematic. Lethem is one of the villages to be transformed into towns and is the key point for trade with Brazil. It is also host to the Annual Rupununi Rodeo and Rupununi Expo.