Dear Editor,
We the residents of Lethem have been suffering a shortage of the main requirements for our day-to-day chores, ie, electricity and water.
For the past three months we have been enduring a series of power outages that have lasted 4, 7 and 8 hours. At the time of writing we only received 16 hours of electricity on 23rd and 24th daily, and a trickle of water from the tap as a consequence of the interrupted electricity supply.
We are given all kinds of excuses, such as a fuel shortage, the rationing of fuel, a generator breakdown and persons not paying bills so the company cannot buy sufficient fuel.
Editor, the bottom line is management. The Prime Minister installed a new board but it’s like old wine in a new bottle. Some of these persons were members of the Board in the past but were left out of the immediate past Board. The organisation to which they belong at a meeting with the PM at which I was present, asked why no member of the Rupununi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI) was on the Board. I immediately asked the PM to explain what criteria were used to select members of the Board. He could not answer the question or he did not want to answer. Lo and behold the Board was dissolved and a new Board installed with not one but two persons from the RCCI, and they are in key positions ‒ one as chairman of the Board and the other has since become the acting CEO of the Lethem Power Company (LPC).
Editor, these same persons had called for the removal of the past CEO of the LPC, Mr John Fredericks on the grounds that he was not qualified. The question is, is the present CEO acting qualified?
Editor, a bill is considered delivered when the same is posted. Yet the LPC is asking consumers to uplift bills at its office. Incompetence and mismanagement are the order of the day, from the RDC, IMC to the LPC. They are all one pea in the same pod.
By the way is there a disagreement at the top of the Lethem Power Company as it relates to the awarding of contracts?
I would like the PM to visit Lethem for a meeting with the residents as soon as possible, because while the elephants fight the grass perishes.
Yours faithfully,
Carlton Beckles
