Vice President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo during an interview on Friday underscored that Guyana’s current electricity woes are a direct result of the APNU+AFC’s shortsightedness as it relates to investments in power supply to meet increasing demand, and its sabotaging of the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project.
Dr Jagdeo pointed out that the APNU+AFC told many lies about the Amaila Falls Project including that the costs of electricity would double.
“In fact, at that time, the cost of electricity was $0.30 per kilowatt per hour. We were going to buy power at $0.10 per kilowatt hour. Our cost of generation was over $0.20, so it would have cut the prices by half… Because they had the customers and they were getting cheaper power because it was costing them $0.20 per kilowatt hour to generate. Now, they would get it at $0.10 per kilowatt hour. So, even if they drop it from $0.30 to $0.20 per kilowatt hour, they were still making the margin,” he said during an interview earlier Thursday.
If not for the butchery of the Amaila Falls project, the vice president underlined that since 2017, Guyana would have had more affordable and reliable power.
He said that the current hot temperatures being experienced together with the construction of many new houses over the past few years, the need for air conditioning in households and businesses has been greater, causing a rise in electricity demand.
The Vice President pointed out that the APNU did nothing in five years, “they just put a small power plant that they bought from Germany in the Essequibo Coast, nothing here.”
After the no-confidence motion, the vice president also noted that the Opposition illegally utilised money from the consolidated fund even though there was no budget and urgency pay for a power plant.
“Up to now, we have a hard time, we had to install it. We have a hard time now getting the full thing to operate. It was not operating well because due diligence was not done. Then, we have had to buy emergency power like some small units to keep this going. we are buying 17 1×7 megawatt power plants to tide us over another maybe 27 megawatts of power and that has to come in before December, emergency power,” Dr Jagdeo stated.
As he went on to explain, “They told me a couple of days ago, after we refurbished a lot of the sets…Our installed capacity now is about 170-something megawatts of power and the peak demand because of this heat and the people turn on AC… It is 172 megawatts.”
The Vice President emphasised that the country’s capacity and demand are almost on par, therefore if one units needs to be taken offline for repair, it will have an adverse effect due to the APNU’s shortsightedness.
“They did not invest in that(power capacity), they invested in buying hundreds of millions of vehicles for ministers and a whole range of things, but never in power supply.”
He is still confident that power plants will help with the country’s electrical problems until the groundbreaking gas-to-energy project is completed, even though the Opposition is attempting to sabotage this project.
Dr Jagdeo further stressed that the APNU do not plan for the future as impetuous decisions being made are in their nature, “now we have to struggle until that project is completed…They operate like a cake. We have had to come back and pick up the pieces again and try to form a coherent strategy around the delivery of power to people. We are struggling right now to keep the lights on because of the lack of investment. What affects you today is a decision you did not make three or four years ago, that is how it works in these sectors. So, the lack of decision making there in that period haunts us up to today.”
