The Guyana Power & Light Inc seems committed to improving its service. A Customers Call Centre was to be launched on Wednesday July 2, but was postponed to a date to be announced later. A call centre will remove the frustration of consumers who make telephone calls and cannot speak to anyone in authority.
The case of Janet Ramkarran is one that has to be kept in the public eye until some action is taken to resolve the problem. The technician cannot determine that she is to remain in darkness for the rest of her life. She has been without power since January and a letter written in June and signed by A. Johnson, Customer Services, has not been placed in her file. The letter informed her of a misreading of her meter and stated that there would be an adjustment. This has not happened.
A technician checked her meter in October last year and found that it was not registering her consumption of electricity, but power had been diverted to another residence. She was accused of tampering with the meter and was eventually disconnected in January 2008.
Her meter is located outside her house, above her door. Although disconnected the meter has continued to register, and her original bill for $14,000 has been increased to $200,000. The reasonable expectation was that the matter would be referred to a higher authority and investigated to find who was receiving power and whether that person had tampered with the meter. To expect Janet to pay the high charges demanded is out of the question. She is a senior citizen, a widow and a diabetic and has had to live in darkness for six months.
The Guyana Con-sumers Association expects a better approach to problems like this. There should be a committee to review and a consumer representative should be on the committee.
A consumer brought some recent GPL bills to the GCA office. They showed that her consumption had increased from 23 units to 230 units. Each month a 0 was placed at the end of the actual consumption shown. A telephone call to the Public Relations Officer revealed that the multiplier was changed from 1 to 10. Why was a note not attached to the bill explaining the reason for a change in the multiplier? The multiplier 12 is used for certain types of meters.
The GCA had hoped that problems with GPL service would have disappeared in time because of the installation of the pre-payment system. The association was originally not in favour of the introduction of pre-payment, one of the reasons being the unsolved complaints generally made by low income consumers. Two concerns stated:
“The metering and billing systems in the GPL are consistently plagued with a plethora of problems and difficulties which victimize the consumers. At present consumers have an opportunity to protest and try to have the Corporation correct its iniquities and mistakes. When GPL would have collected one’s money by pre-paid meters there would be no urgency for them to solve consumer problems.
“The proposed pre-paid system would lead to fierce hostility and bad blood between the consumers and GPL and this would lead to protests of various kinds and which may stimulate unsocial behaviour.”
It is hoped that immediate attention will be paid to the problem faced by Janet Ramkarran so that her distress will be removed immediately.
GWI has improved its service to those who live in upper flats. It should now raise the pressure from 6 h to 7 h to supply water to those who live in upper flats of two storeyed houses.
The Lethem Power Plant supplies power to its customers 18 hours a day. From l h to 7 h there is no electricity. The Power Plant should present to each of its customers one large pan to hold ice when the current is off. This would help to keep refrigerators cool during the off period.
