Circuitry issues with Bosai’s power distribution resulted in Linden enduring a 12-hour blackout which began on Wednesday night and ended at midday on Thursday.
“We had a problem with [the circuitry because of damage]. But we were able to temporarily bypass it,” Bosai’s Community Relations Officer Vanessa Davis told Stabroek News. She said that while the problem has been rectified for the time being, spares to repair burnt and damaged components would have arrived in the country by Thursday afternoon. She said it was envisaged that by yesterday the repairs would have been completed as the plan was to work through the night.
Davis said the Linden Hospital Complex and the bauxite plant were the first to receive power when the problem was initially addressed on Thursday. She said they were powered up around 10:30 hrs Thursday, with the rest of the community getting back power at around midday.
Regional Chairman of the Regional Democratic Council of Region 10 Sharma Solomon said yesterday that businesses lost heavily during the 12-hour blackout. He made the disclosure following an inter-stakeholder meeting held in the town. The meeting sought to examine with the stakeholders the effects of the extensive blackout, what caused it, how it was being rectified, and how such a situation could be addressed in the future, should there be a recurrence.
Solomon said Bosai contacted him on Thursday morning to request a meeting with stakeholders with a view to ensuring that citizens were kept abreast of what was happening. Solomon said that at one point, they were looking at the possibility of a two to three-day outage. He said that it was at this point that he called for multiple stakeholders to meet. These included Linden Electricity Company Inc, Guyana Water Inc and the police.
“At this meeting I asked for an assessment of what the problem was and to see how it could be fixed. We decided to put together a team headed by Horace James and this team will look at how we will address [such an occurrence],” Solomon said. He said businesses called in to say that they had losses in the range of $5 million during the blackout.
The issue of electricity in Linden has been on the front burner politically and economically since government announced during the 2012 budget that the subsidy to the community for electricity was being scaled back.
This prompted protests in Linden, which culminated in the shooting to death of three protesters leading to the appointing of a Commission of Inquiry and an agreement, which had among its aims an examination of the electricity tariff and economic realities of the mining town prior to any further action on the part of government.
