Fired GPL CEO Bharat Dindyal was scathingly criticised in an evaluation done last year by the board of the utility, which said that he was blameworthy for poor project and asset management which among other things had seen 10 generating sets written off in the past few years.
Dindyal’s performance has surfaced as a point of contention following the decision of Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson to end his employment with GPL after a public flare-up between the CEO and his Deputy. During this charged row at a GPL facility, Dindyal was heard using profanity and referring to the minister in a disparaging manner. On August 14th, Patterson announced that he had decided to sever Dindyal after his own performance appraisal and the CEO’s “intervention” in staff matters.
With his decision to sack Dindyal coming in for criticism, Patterson in recent days has defended the move and during his contribution to the budget debate on Thursday, he adverted to the findings of the evaluation by the board, which had been led at the time by Winston Brassington.
Patterson told the Assembly on Thursday that he had been hurt by statements coming from the opposition camp suggesting that his recent actions relating to the firing of Dindyal could be deemed as “ethnic cleansing.”
“I have personally asked that they do not go down this rabbit hole because it has a rat trap at the end. I take no pleasure in defending my and my government’s action,” he said, while stressing that the record must be set straight, otherwise the comments will continue.
The evaluation, seen by Stabroek News, will likely raise questions as to the quality of management at GPL and why the then PPP/C government was silent about these serious problems. Observers say the contents of the evaluation would also be of interest to the Public Utilities Commission.
Amid growing concerns in GPL about Dindyal’s performance and behaviour, the evaluation said that at a private meeting held in July 2014, Prime Minister Sam Hinds requested that the board evaluate the CEO and submit a report for review. This evaluation gave Dindyal a score of 43.5% and recommended against a renewal of the CEO’s contract. Dindyal’s contract was scheduled to end on December 31st, 2014 but contained a clause requiring him to give at least six months’ notice of his intention to renew. He gave no signal until November 27th, 2014 when he wrote Brassington saying that he had initially intended not to seek a renewal of the contract “hence this late notification of my intention to renew.” He also proposed that his emoluments be increased by US$1,500. Surprise has been expressed in the public that Dindyal’s annual salary plus benefits totaled approximately $74M.
The board then wrote Hinds advising of Dindyal’s interest in the renewal of the contract and making clear that it did not support a renewal of the contract but leaving the matter in the hands of the `shareholder’, the Government of Guyana. Hinds then agreed to an extension of his stay but without a new contract. This decision would likely raise questions given the fractious state of relations between the Board and Dindyal and also because of concerns about his performance.
In its evaluation last year, the board cited six areas of concern. These were poor asset management and maintenance, poor project management, frequency of blackouts, failure to respect the board, poor management style and a lack of focus on customer service. It was in the area of asset management and maintenance that the evaluation was heavily critical. It said that GPL had over the last few years written off over 10 generator sets, which were ruined “due to poor operation, catastrophic failure due to lack of proper maintenance, and fire.” It said that as a result of this GPL had had to rely on rented generation. It said that the most recent case of this was the 2-5 MW Mirrlees sets at Canefield. “This plant, commissioned a few years after its expected completion date in 2009 and way over budget, has now collapsed. At best, the 10 MW is now down to 5 MW. This has compounded the supply situation in Berbice”, the evaluation added. GPL made no public mention that the capacity of the Mirrlees was down to five MW or that poor operation had contributed to this.
The evaluation also said that generating sets at Bartica and to a lesser extent, Anna Regina have also reflected a less than optimal level of management. In relation to Transmission and Distribution, the evaluation said that the board is too frequently told that the utility doesn’t have adequate transformers yet “we are forced to pay huge rentals for (Caterpillar) sets due to a lack of management of our own assets.”
Cost overruns
On the question of poor project management, the evaluation said that most of the ventures lacked proper project plans. It cited generation projects at Vreed-en-Hoop, Canefield, Bartica and Anna Regina and also the metering scheme and the Infrastructure Develop-ment Plan (IDP). The evaluation said that the consequence of this was cost overruns, the most pronounced of which was at the Vreed-en-Hoop plant. There had been several reports of a massive overrun on this project but GPL had played this down. Delays and the lack of clarity in outcomes were also cited as repercussions of the poor project management.
Dindyal was also accused of failure to respect the board. The evaluation said that Dindyal bypassed the board on most matters, failed to propose policies for the board’s approval, refused to carry out instructions, instructed management to ignore board decisions and failed to report to the board on a routine basis. He was also accused of telling board members that being non-engineers they were not competent to instruct management and on a number of occasions expressed this view at Cabinet meetings in the presence of the board.
The evaluation also charged that Dindyal’s management style was “autocratic and ad-hoc leading at times to an almost dysfunctional level of organization. Technical personnel are almost self-directed by the CEO with line managers typically over-ridden, ignored, or marginalised.” The board said that this led to various problems, including managers resigning or failing to carry out the functions they were hired for. It cited the resignation of Elwyn Marshall, where the Director of Operations said he could not work in such an environment. It said that similar views were expressed by the DCEO-Technical, Colin Welch, who was ironically the manager that Dindyal had the confrontation with. The evaluation also cited an improper action by Dindyal in relation to another DCEO, Ash Deonarine. A few months prior to the evaluation, Deonarine resigned and on enquiry as to the reason for this, it was revealed that Dindyal had told Deonarine that the board was taking on another manager from a state-owned entity to replace him. “This was absolutely untrue. It appeared that the CEO was seeking to encourage the exit of the DCEO, as he was feeling threatened,” it noted. Deonarine, who continued as DCEO, was recently sent on leave over the discovery that he paid himself $27M from the PetroCaribe Fund allegedly without approval.
“Today, GPL has seen substantial sums invested (over US$150M invested in the last 8 years). However, modern management techniques such as planning, project management, and a team approach are generally absent,” the evaluation said. It added that a comparison of GPL operations versus those which were outsourced showed that outsourced generation was highly available, well maintained and efficiently run, while GPL generation was characterised by low availability, catastrophic failures, low efficiency and frequent breakdowns.
On the question of blackouts, the evaluation report said that despite substantial investments there continued to be a significant level of outages. It added that for the last few years GPL constantly failed to spend more than 40% of its planned budget for repairs and maintenance to the network and this included matters as simple as route clearing for trees. Further, the evaluation said that GPL has failed to follow international best practice in terms of technical operations despite this being the standard set out in the GPL licence.
