The Guyana Power & Light Com-pany (GPL) has terminated its agreement with bill payment service, Bill Direct Holdings Inc., following concerns about misappropriation of funds.
Stabroek News understands that sums of money that would have been paid to the billing company by GPL customers were not paid over to the power company.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bharrat Dindyal confirmed to this newspaper yesterday that there were some discrepancies in the financial operations of the billing company and said that the two parties met on Tuesday afternoon and yesterday morning to discuss the issue. He was unable to say exactly how much money is involved since the information is “trickling in,” nor was he able to say over what period of time the discrepancies occurred.
However, one source told this newspaper that the amount of money involved could be in excess of US$1M.
According to Dindyal, Monday has been set as the deadline for the billing company to submit all the necessary information, so that there can be reconciliation. He said that the problems revolve around the internal operations of the billing service. The bill payment service, through their lawyers, has made a proposal to GPL which is still on the table, Dindyal said.
Dindyal said that as of now, the matter is being treated as “a misappropriation of funds” since legal advice obtained suggests that there is not enough evidence to classify it as a fraud. The police, Dindyal said, have not been called in as yet.
“For now, as of 30thApril, 2010 we have terminated the agreement with them,” Dindyal said. He, however, did not rule out the possibility of the billing company restarting operations if the situation is “remedied.”
When contacted by Stabroek News, one of the lawyers for Bill Direct Holdings Inc. Anil Nandlall confirmed that the service had made a proposal to GPL. “I hope they accept it,” he said, while declining to go into the details of the proposal. Such an agreement, Nandlall said, would be beneficial to both entities. Nandlall added that he hoped that the matter could be resolved by next week.
According to Dindyal, Bill Direct Holdings Inc has been in operation locally since about 2008. The company’s CEO is Barbadian Dwayne Roach. Dindyal said that GPL had an issue with the bill service company sometime last year, but said that this matter had been resolved.
Questioned as to how GPL’s operations would be affected, the CEO said he did not anticipate much of an impact. “We will continue with our operations,” he said. He said too that the customers who had made their payments to the billing service would not be affected. According to him, it was not a case where the details of the customers who paid to the billing service were never communicated to the power company.
