Consumer issues should be tackled before final GEC deal signing
-Holder

By Patrick Denny
Stabroek News
September 24, 1999


Consumer advocate, Sheila Holder, has expressed dissatisfaction that certain issues concerning the privatisation of the power company, which she raised at the recent workshop held by government consultants at the Ocean View Convention Centre on Monday, were not adequately addressed.

In a telephone interview with Stabroek News on Wednesday, however, Holder stressed that because of years of unsatisfactory service through local mismanagement, the long suffering consumer would be better served by privatisation of the Guyana Electricity Corporation (GEC) and the proposed operations of the new company Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL).

Her main concern was that the document had been presented as a fait accompli and without the adequate inputs that would safeguard the consumer.

The question of the affordability of any rate increases, which she brought up at the seminar, was only discussed in relation to higher rates in the Caribbean as to justify increases here. But Holder noted that there were large disparities between incomes in Trinidad for example and Guyana. The suggestion that a "growing of the economy" would help the poorest consumers was, Holder said, too nebulous to be a satisfactory answer.

Given that the new corporation is intent on seeing a reduction in technical and non technical losses, she argued that a mechanism should have been put in place that such savings would go straight back to the consumer in the form of lower rates. She went on to say that consumers had already been paying for these losses in the form of blackouts and voltage fluctuations and that it was not time for them to pay again in the form of higher rates.

Holder noted with dismay that no service contract was proposed between GPL and the customer which would delineate the obligations of each party. She asked if this oversight did not give the foreign investor a carte blanche in its operations. The proposed route of complaints being referred to the PUC would, she said, certainly deter a dissatisfied consumer.

On the sensitive issue of rural electrification and the charges of discrimination that plagued the GEC, Holder observed that this issue would not go away and wondered if a policy had been clearly enunciated to address what are at times simply erroneous perceptions as to why one village received electricity over another.

It was her hope that these important consumer issues could be adequately reflected in the final document before the signing scheduled for October 1.


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Guyana: Land of Six Peoples