Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, today defended the Guyana Government’s approval of a  US$650,000 per month contract between the Guyana Power and Light Company, and Dominican Republic energy company, InterEnergy Group.

He said a Memorandum of Understanding between the two sides for consultancy services has been in existence since last year.  

He said the company was hired to provide supervision services to oversee the building out of GPL’s new infrastructure including modern towers.

“We had an MOU with this company since early 2024, and alot of it is for the supervision of this infrastrutre, like the towers, because when you are building those towers, you want to build them to international standard, you can’t get GPL staff to supervise it, they dont have time they are busy trying to keep the power on and fixing the system, so you have to get a firm to supervise,” Mr. Jagdeo said.

Mr. Jagdeo said there was nothing secretive about the contract, although the Government made no mention of it until after News Source first reported on the issue.

According to the Vice President, the company is well known for its technical capabilities and the government thought it best to engage with it for critical works needed to be undertaken by GPL.

He said the price is actually low for the scope of work to be done.

“And when you look at the cost compare to other supervision cost, you then see, that this is a small amount and it was not secretly done, you can’t secretly hire somebody, they are trying the resurrect the old thing about corruption,” Jagdeo stated.

Meanwhile, on the recent spate of power outages, Mr. Jagdeo clarified that the blackouts in several communities were not due to a shortage of power in the system, but as a result of infrastructure works that are being done in several areas.

“We have enough power in the system, we have enough power with the power ship and the other plants, its the other plants, it just that they have to interuupt power to move these utilities poles for the constructiona acitivites and it creates problems for people,” the Vive President said.

He urged persons affected to be paitent, noting that there is not much of a choice because the road works have to continue.  He noted however that government is definiteively trying to fix the system.

“The system that we are putting in place now, when the gas to energy is completed, a lot of those transmission mains that we have there would be removed from these high towers—we have awarded a contracted for US$422m to build those high towers to take the power all the way to the border with Suriname, then it will go to Parika and Linden, so it is a modern grid we are building out,” Mr. Jagdeo noted.

Today, several communities across Georgetown and Berbice were hit with a power outage for more than four hours. GPL blamed the problem on an unexplained explosion at its Kingston power station.

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