The party which has a lightbulb as its symbol will be focusing on the electricity sector as part of its campaign strategy.

The Change Guyana party hosted its first weekly press conference today and unpacked a number of proposals and plans that it has for the electricity sector and the Guyana Power and Light company.

Presidential Candidate for Change Guyana, businessman Robert Badal believes that one of the first things that need to be done is the privatization of power generation for the national power company.

He said the party proposes “phased privatization of generating assets and generation of electricity to be private-sector managed and owned and electricity supply to GPL under a power purchase agreement.”

Badal said he is convinced it is a model that could work in Guyana since it works in many other CARICOM countries and that has erased power supply problems.

There have been attempts in the past to privatize GPL’s operations but those attempts all failed. Badal said his proposal would only deal with the generation of power.

The Change Guyana Presidential Candidate is the former Chairman of the Guyana Power and Light Company. He said during his two years at the company (2016 to 2018), the company saw improvements with more income and a decline in losses.

He trumpeted those figures as part of his management experience, that he believes is needed to lead Guyana.

Badal said it is clear that the current government and the previous one, both failed to successfully deal with the power problems in the country and GPL. He said as Guyana moves towards the oil industry and more investors are expected, stable electricity is something that must be given priority.

Just recently, the current Chairman of GPL Rawle Lucus revealed that the company has experienced power outages at a rate of eight per day.

Change Guyana Prime Ministerial Candidate Nigel Hinds said that figure is unacceptable. He believes GPL must be put in a stronger position to make it viable and reliable.

Questioned about whether the plans of Change Guyana will result in cheaper electricity rates, Badal said he would have to do the math.

Change Guyana was launched last week and has slowly been rolling out some of its plans and programmes as it prepares for elections in March 2020.

Related posts:

Guyana needs to make significant improvements in power generation to attract investors -US Ambassador Change Guyana wants to change Guyana’s tax system with several reductions in various taxes Change Guyana urges voters to change their way of voting at next elections GPL facing power generation deficit; Blackouts likely