There has hardly been a period over the past thirty-odd years when this country has not been plagued by problems associated with the inability of the local power company to provide a reliable supply of electricity.
Problems of one sort or another associated with unreliable electricity supply have become an occupational hazard of living in Guyana or, for that matter, doing business here. At the domestic consumer end of the scale the problems have ranged from long periods of unacceptable inconvenience and significant dislocation to people’s private lives, on the one hand, to ruined electrical appliances – the result of unpredictable power surges. At the business end of the scale there is, at the one extreme, production losses resulting from frequent power outages and, at the other, substantially higher production costs resulting from the need to install independent electricity generation facilities, an option which several private sector entities have had to pursue in order to keep their businesses afloat. Higher electricity costs, of course, impact directly on the competitiveness of locally produced goods on the regional and international markets.
Alternating ownership of the power company between state and foreign private hands has done nothing whatsoever to solve the problem and we have, over time, become used to what are often mixed and confusing signals that customarily emanate from the power company regarding the real status of the electricity situation. In the process it has done little if anything to try to placate an outraged public, a posture that has rendered its public image progressively worse over the years. Then there is the practice of further offending electricity consumers by sometimes issuing exorbitant and often unsubstantiated electricity bills, refusing to take responsibility for damaged electrical appliances and issuing bland, ‘wordy’ and complex explanations for its failure to provide electricity.
Part of the problem reposes in the fact that what is now the Guyana Power and Light Company enjoys a monopoly in the local electricity generation industry so that whenever it is unable to provide power it can say and do pretty much as it pleases since it is altogether aware that most of us can do no more than grin and bear it. What appears not to be recognized is that the quality of service by this monopoly entity is infinitely worse than that in another monopoly sector where government has been making quite a racket about the need for bringing that monopoly to an end.
The problem of unreliable electricity supply has not always had to do with fuel prices. Sometimes – as in the present case – it has had to do with other issues which, it sometimes appears, are allowed to fester, to reach a point of crisis, before they receive remedial attention. It is widely believed, for example, that ageing infrastructure and an often unreliable equipment maintenance regime have all played their own considerable parts in this unending tale of woe that has been created by more than three decades of electricity supply problems.
Talk about a hydropower option which goes back even more years than the electricity crisis itself has, up until now, amounted to little more than political gaffe and aborted project proposals though the current Amaila Falls project appears to be making some headway. The truth is, however, that Guyanese have become so cynical about hydro electricity related promises that they will probably believe in its realization only after the first such project contributes the first megawatt of power to the national grid.
This most recent spate of electricity supply problems could hardly have come at a more difficult time. We are in the midst of an economic and financial crisis which continues to impact on the productive sector, particularly, the manufacturing sector and as one businessman told this newspaper recently, it amounts to patent nonsense to expect the private sector to help dig us out of an economic hole while being denied reliable access to a resource without which it simply cannot do so.
Failure to provide a reliable electricity supply for more than three decades has been, one of the major reasons (perhaps, the major one) for the prevailing underdevelopment of the country’s post-independence economy. It is a failure that has stymied the growth of the business sector, particularly the manufacturing sector, resulted in additional millions of dollars in production costs, led to the closure of small businesses across the country and deterred potential investors who recognize that unreliable electricity supply makes Guyana a less than ideal investment destination. At the level of ordinary consumers electricity woes have added to the various other challenges – high cost of living, low wages, unemployment, underemployment, crime et al – associated with routine existence, creating a psychological “bug sick” that is carried over into the national work ethic and which, perhaps, has made a larger contribution than we think to the productivity deficiency about which we hear so many complaints.
Interestingly, the current power supply woes come at a time too when promised developments in our telecommunications sector offers opportunity for the significant expansion of the IT sector, an opportunity that will be significantly delayed unless we can get our electricity supply act together.
And no matter what reasons are proffered for this state of affairs it is, in the final analysis, a failure that can be laid nowhere else but at the feet of government.
