Dear Editor,
I am very much concerned with what the power company GPL has embarked upon under the disguise of restructuring. According to a letter sent to an employee of the company that individual was invited to a meeting with the management to discuss the restructuring scenario. At that meeting the management presented to the employee figures which represented the amount of cash that employee was entitled to as a redundancy package on termination of employment. At a recent meeting held by NAACIE the union that represents the workers, it was told to the workers present that the management of GPL had informed the union by way of letter that the restructuring of the company was necessary because of the implementation of new techniques and equipment it had introduced and installed. As far as I am aware there have been no new techniques or equipments at any GPL locations.
When GPL had mentioned or rather indicated last year its intention to send home 247 employees they mentioned nothing about new techniques or equipment.
What management said was that they were embarking on a cost cutting exercise where they will be hiring contractors to execute certain projects, which will be done at a cheaper cost. Therefore it was necessary for them to terminate the services of some employees. The management also said that the terminated employees could have formed themselves into groups and applied to GPL to work as contractors.
The problems faced by GPL are as a result of mismanagement, corruption and lack of accountability and the blame should not be placed on the workers. We all know that fuel costs have risen dramatically but if there was proper and efficient control of the limited resources available this situation could have been avoided. I support the call for a commission of enquiry to be established to conduct a forensic audit into the entire operations of G.P.L. The results of such an enquiry should be made public.
Listed below are some of the areas the commission should focus:
(1) Why is it that the management continues to purchase those high speed diesel engine ‘CAT’ sets even though they are very costly to maintain and have an extraordinary fuel consumption. At present most of these ‘CAT’ sets only generate .5MW each maximum.
(2)There is a contractor who has five tank wagons transporting fuel for G.P.L. on a daily basis. The commission should find out exactly –
(a) how much money is being paid to this contractor for this exercise.
(b) whether any tender process was established and competitive bidding done in awarding this contract to this individual as it would seem as though this is a life contract.
(3) The donor agency at one time stopped the funding for the U.A.E.P. because some irregularities were uncovered. An audit of the materials bought and used was requested and it was stated during the audit that some of the line hardware installed on the poles were vandalized. What we need to know was whether this discovery was reported to the police and what action followed.
(4) Why was the Storekeeper from Sophia Store transferred. It has been alleged that because he refused to allow the purchasing of materials already in the store by senior personnel in a deal he was transferred.
(5) How much and who pays the bills for a senior person to be accommodated at a luxury hotel.
(6) What was the result of the investigation into the constructing of an illegal primary voltage line by a contractor attached to G.P.L.
(7) Was the purchase of the fleet of executive vehicles done by G.P.L or was it done through a contractual arrangement? If it was done by contractual arrangement, who was the contractor and was there any competitive bidding?
Yours faithfully,
D. Carryl
