Third quarter deadline for new electricity plant `unacceptable’ – GMSA President
The protracted periods of power outage that have gripped parts of the country over the past few weeks have evoked angry responses from sections of the Georgetown business community backed by calls from the Heads of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) for the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) to seek to bring forward its announced time frame for ending the power supply woes.
City businessmen with whom Stabroek Business spoke earlier this week have said that the prolonged power cuts threaten to ruin their efforts to sustain their operations in what is already a testing economic climate. “It is unthinkable that this could be happening at a time when the country is looking to the private sector to maintain productivity, save jobs and help the country recover from the effects of the global financial and economic crisis,” a businessman who runs an Information Technology equipment supply service told Stabroek Business.
Visits to commercial areas of the city earlier this week found department stores and other business houses trading without electricity, or else, pressing generators into service to power air conditioning units, fans and IT equipment, adding significantly to what the businesses say are already high operating costs. And some of the business operators with whom this newspaper spoke hinted at the possibility that the loss of business resulting from the unreliable electricity supply and the additional costs associated with providing alternative power supply may well make the difference between saving jobs and sending home some workers.
Earlier this week the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) said that it had taken delivery of three Wartsila generating sets and that its new US$30m plant designed to increase capacity would be operational by the third quarter of the year. However, President of the GMSA Ramesh Dookhoo told Stabroek Business that the timeline provided by GPL for the completion of the new power plant was “unacceptable” since it failed to take account of the gravity of the situation. “We could well be talking about the end of September before the plant is up and working. What is the business sector to do between now and then?”
Meanwhile Dookhoo told Stabroek Business that he believed that the situation warranted a meeting between the private sector and the policymakers to address what he said was “a matter of genuine national importance.” Stabroek Business was unable to reach GPL Board Chairman Winston Brassington to determine whether or not a meeting might be convened.
GCCI President Chandradat Chintamani told Stabroek Business that he shared the frustration of the business community and that he shared the view expressed by Dookhoo that time was of the essence in remedying the problem. “When you consider the loss of production, resulting from unreliable power supply, on the one hand and the additional operating costs resulting from the need to use alternative power supply, you understand how serious the situation is, particularly in this crisis period,” Chintamani said. The GCCI President said that he was also concerned that the power supply problems will not serve to boost the optimism of the growing e-commerce sector and other services in the local IT industry.
While GPL has said that its new Wartsila engines are “heavy duty engines” and will bring about both lower fuel costs as well as lower operating costs, Dookhoo said that the persistent problems that have plagued the country’s electricity sector point to the need to hasten the creation of hydro electricity capacity. “All of this points to the need for the Amaila Falls project to be pursued with due haste,” Dookhoo said,
Meanwhile, Chintamani told Stabroek Business that he was concerned over the fact that “given the economic circumstances in the country at this time and the importance of the private sector in responding to the financial and economic crisis,” government had not seen it fit to meet with the private sector to discuss their electricity problems and provide a reasonable timeline for remedying those problems. “We need to know what is happening. We know that this is not about fuel and we need to be told whether there are fundamental generation and distribution problems at GPL,” Chintamani said.
