Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 24, 2017 News
Guyana Power and Light (GPL) is preparing to name a new Chief Executive Officer earlier in the New Year. Officials last week confirmed that the state-owned power company, which has been without a substantive chief since August 2015, has for all intents and purposes ended its search for one.
London-headquartered PricewaterhouseCoopers was involved in short listing the candidates and a Jamaican has come out on top.
CEO (ag) Colin Welch was let go last year leaving Renford Homer to perform the duties since then.
The Jamaican, officials disclosed, has successfully headed up a number of large projects in that country as well as a large entity. GPL is now moving to tie up a number of loose ends, including remuneration.
The naming of a new CEO would come as the current life of the Board of Directors is due to expire this year end.
Already, since early, Chairman, Robert Badal, signaled his intentions to leave, as he is busy pursuing expansion of the Pegasus Hotel, which he owns. So the search will also be on for a new Chairman and board.
GPL is facing increasing pressure to reduce outages and improve its performance.
Despite almost US$70M investments in installing new high powered transmission lines and submarine cables across the Demerara and Berbice River to create one grid, the troubles of outages have been angering the populace. There is an ongoing US$23M project to run more transmission lines and install more than 20,000 smart meters. However, there have been no updates on that controversial contract that ended up in court over the qualifications of the Chinese contractor, CMC. The Government, despite questions over CMC’s past performance, had argued that the project must go ahead as the funding, a loan, is in jeopardy.
CMC is the same company that built the submarine cables and a number of sub-stations. A consultant report had blasted aspects of the sub-stations. A few months ago, in August, tenders were also opened for more sub-stations. However, there have been little details.
In the meantime, GPL is coming under increasing criticism for hardly denting its technical losses despite investments to the tune of billions of dollars.
There has been accusations also of companies caught stealing and owing tens of millions of dollars with GPL facing difficulties in collecting.
Guyana is toying with the idea of using natural gas to power its aging generators with a wind farm at Hope, East Coast Demerara, on the cards too.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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