Patterson tells PPP gov’t ‘don’t penalize big businesses on national grid, improve the power supply’

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Engineer and former Minister under the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition and Member of Parliament David Patterson said the Peoples Progressive (PPP) Government is incompetent on the issue of power supply. “For starters, the PPP tried to close the barn door when the horse bolted”. These comments come in the wake of the President of Guyana saying that the government will be seeking to remove large companies from Guyana’s power grid to reduce the power outages being experienced in Guyana.

During an interview with this publication, Patterson said the question of power demand has been around for quite a while. The engineer said if you don’t keep abreast of the power supply, you have you will run into shortage. He explained that “the PPP is not shy at holding lavish opening ceremonies, giving themselves kudos for big businesses and people opening malls, hospitals, car dealerships, hotels or whatever. They always have a minister there and every time they open an event they wax lyrically, or he or she waxes lyrically about the confidence in the government and their policies”.

Patterson noted that if these new businesses have been opened up and they are going on the grid, obviously the need for power increases.” The engineer further stated that the PPP has done absolutely nothing in the last three years to improve the power supply he said. “If these businesses can self-generate then it is incumbent on the government to subsidize them rather than penalize them for something the government has done.” Patterson, noting that fuel is zero-rated, insists that the government can offer a subsidy so that the businesses that self generate can stay off the grid permanently.

He added, “Rather than us having the fairy lights issue we are having now,” the Parliamentarian said, “the sad reality for folks in the country is that we would be experiencing blackouts, ‘distribution frequency management’, until January 2024”. This, he noted, is because of the containerized sets that the government is now purchasing, what he called ‘used sets’ from Honduras, adding that “ imagine the fastest growing economy in the world, Little Dubai is buying second and third-hand sets from Honduras”.

Patterson said the reasons these sets are available, they have been mothballed and they are no longer being used so they are stored in a scrap heap and they try to find some third world or war-torn country to sell them to.” He added, “Here comes along the PPP the fastest growing economy in the world and buys these old generating sets”. Patterson said, “It would be interesting to know how they knew about these sets as he stated. “This is one of those Su-Gate issues, a fella figure out we are short on power, walking pass a scrap yard in Honduras and said hey, here is the situation, Vice President and President Ali, I will bring in these containerized sets for you, and they then go on the air and they make people feel good as if they are doing us a favor but this is not a favor.”

MP Patterson said the Coalition (APNU+AFC) government had brought in new generating sets of 48 megawatts that have kept us going for the last three years. He said the APNU+AFC government had tendered out for another 30 megawatts that was supposed to be here in September of 2020. He said it takes a year from purchase to installation, so the sets purchased in 2020 would have completed installation by 2022. Patterson said the PPP came to power and whatever the Coalition (APNU+AFC) did, they scrapped it. Patterson noted that the old units are rusty and they are probably spraying them at sea in bright yellow and the public would believe they are new sets but when opened, they are all old sets and they are inefficient.

He also noted that in 2015 the government rented generating sets similar to those being procured from Caterpillar. Patterson stated, “We got rid of them, the maintenance; they work with gasoline or diesel, but because of the speed at which the turbine turns, they were not fuel efficient.” Patterson said the sets were used in Anna Regina, Bartica, and Leguan and we got rid of them because they were just leaking money and not cost-efficient. He added that these containerized sets were not meant to power a national grid; they were meant to power work sites or remote areas building infrastructure.