– rubbishes falsehoods told to the nation
During a press conference held on Thursday, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, the General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP), dismissed claims made by former Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson, that the APNU+AFC coalition added 60 megawatts (MW) of power to the Guyana Power and Light grid during its five-year tenure in office.
Dr Jagdeo clarified that only 5.5MW was added to Cane Field, which unfortunately collapsed after just six months. He further revealed that 5.4MW was added at Anna Regina, but only 1.8MW is currently functioning. Additionally, 3.3MW was added to the Bartica grid.
Contrary to Patterson’s claim that 46.5MW was added to the Garden of Eden power plant, Dr Jagdeo’s statements suggest that the actual total of functional MW additions made to the grid by the APNU+AFC coalition was significantly lower.
“Well, the 46.5 megawatts of power that he said that they added, three months before the elections, through a deal that was not public tender, they signed a contract to buy this 46.5mw…when we got into office…the equipment were in Finland; they hadn’t even left Finland…“We have had to bring that in and get it installed; that is how APNU plans. So effectively, what they added in 5 years was 14mw of power,” the general secretary informed reporters.
This, the general secretary emphasised is the typical untrustworthy nature of the coalition, “and today they doubled down on it; they expanded generation and this was a result of multi-year planning. So, where is this multi-year planning? he questioned.
Moreover, the PPP/C administration left $85 million in the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as part of the Guyana-Norway Agreement, initially to fund the Amalia Falls Hydropower project but was discarded by the coalition.
“They [APNU] were planning to use it for solar. They said forget the hydro, five years passed [and] they couldn’t even use the money. They didn’t even have a project…not one project. We even left them the money, they had $85M to use and they couldn’t even use it in the five years,” he further revealed.
In just under three years, the current administration has added over 40 megawatts of power to the grid.
“But we have these old units that should have been replaced in 2017 by Amalie, that we still have to coax along,” he said, reminding that the growth in demand has significantly increased.
The multi-billion gas-to-energy plant being developed in Wales, Region Three, when completed, is projected to provide about 300 megawatts of power, which will significantly improve the efficiency of GPL’s operations.