Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo today slammed the Ministry of Public Works and the Guyana and Power and Light Company over the collapse of several concrete power poles along the Aubrey Barker Road in South Ruimveldt last week, which plunged communities in North and South Ruimveldt into a blackout and water shortage for more than two days.

At a press conference today, Mr. Jagdeo said he is tired of people in Government not doing their jobs and discomforting citizens in the process. 

He said while he acknowledges that accidents could happen, the situation in South Ruimveldt was no ordinary incident.

“Someone needs to give credible answers either GPL or Public Works on what took place and then why would you allow the road contractor to dig out the entire stretch of drain that would discomfort people from getting into their yard, why couldn’t they do it by two blocks at a time then build concrete drains, this is all ridiculous,” an upset Jagdeo said.

The Vice President said from preliminary investigations, the poles were not properly planted by the contractors. He said the responsibility was stiill on the Works Ministry and GPL to ensure that the poles were properly placed.

“Just imagine, if that didn’t happen there, we would have never known that these poles were not placed according to specs, because someone—either the contractor didn’t do their work properly and if the contractor didn’t do the work, they had to do this with the complicity with the people supervising the work and there should be consequences, people have to be blacklisted and fired for this sort of thing, or else it is not going to change,” a visibly upset Mr. Jagdeo said today.

The Vice President said the communities were disrupted in a major way and he will be holding persons accountable for the situation.

“So, Public Works needs to say who design this, who was responsible for this and what was the contractor paid for, whether it was a design fault or whether the contractor did not comply with the design and who supervised this, which engineer supervised this and allowed and it is time that we start terminating people who are not doing their work,” Jagdeo said.

The Vice President said things have now reached a stage where people have to face consequences for their actions and poor decision making.

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