Dear Editor,
I do not live in Linden or in any other community within Region 10. However the looming increased electricity tariffs for the residents of Linden have struck a chord in me; maybe it has done likewise in other Guyanese who are not Lindeners.
The reason I am so uncomfortable with these increases has to do with the fact that we, other Guyanese, have less of an opportunity to chart or influence a new course or to change direction in the quest for an affordable and reliable source of power, especially as the fate of the Amaila Falls Hydroelectric Scheme is still unknown and its viability unproven. As such the coastal regions of Guyana seem to be locked into a system of servitude and bondage to the all powerful and omnipresent Guyana Power & Light Company.
Mr Ramon Gaskin has recently reminded us that GPL continues to lose 33% of all power it generates through line faults. This is total lunacy and madness. Why are we as a nation continuing to tolerate, and worse still, pay and subsidize this bleeding of millions and millions of of dollars, day in, day out, year after year.
It is a burden all the more unjust, heavy and onerous for the poor – the 19% who live in extreme poverty and 36% who live in moderate poverty among whom children under 16 representing 47.5% of the poor are the most severely affected (Guyana PRSP 2011-2015). GPL will never fix this problem as they have no incentive to do so until we, the consumers, demand an end to this oppression. The government of the day, disappointingly, also seems quite content with the status quo. Now they want the residents of Linden to further subsidize this system of GPL’s leaking and porous line tentacles.
I am no engineer, electrician or technician, but what I know is that in life there are always options. I would like to recommend that Lindeners use this opportunity to explore the setting up of their own power plant or sources of power generation in Linden. What better opportunity than now to seriously explore the use of a mix of traditional and alternative sources of power, eg, solar.
If this can be done in the interior, why not in Linden? Let us as Guyanese use our innovation to research, source and identify the possibilities of this. There is a whole world out there grappling with similar problems of affordable power generation.
This would be a venture that the majority of Guyanese would have a vested interest in seeing come to fruition.
I ask that no treatise on or justification of GPL line losses be addressed to me.
Yours faithfully,
Danuta Radzik
