When the Lights Go Out, So Does the Spin

When the Lights Go Out, So Does the Spin

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar–September 2026

In the middle of blistering El Niño conditions, power failures have become more than an inconvenience. They have become a daily assault on ordinary life. Food spoils. Appliances are damaged. Small businesses lose sales. Families cannot sleep. Children cannot study. Water systems fail where pumps depend on electricity. Workers who depend on the internet, refrigeration, machinery or basic lighting find their income and productivity placed at the mercy of a network that repeatedly collapses.

And what has been GPL’s answer? Substation faults. Feeder trips. Emergency works. Analytics. Conservation.

The people are being asked to absorb technical explanations while sitting in darkness. They are being urged to reduce consumption during peak periods while many are simply trying to operate a fan, preserve food in a refrigerator, pump water into a tank, keep a small business open, or find relief from oppressive heat.

No reasonable person disputes the value of conservation. Efficient use of electricity is good policy in any country. But GPL’s message becomes offensive when it appears to shift responsibility toward customers at a time when the utility itself has failed to provide the basic service for which citizens pay.

This is where the public-relations machinery at GPL may finally meet its limit. The spin doctors can continue to issue polished statements about a “smarter grid,” “resilience,” “network analytics” and “long-term transformation.” But rhetoric cannot cool a house without power. It cannot restore a freezer full of spoiled food. It cannot reimburse a shopkeeper for a lost day’s trade. It cannot undo damage to a family’s appliances after repeated surges and outages.

At some point, every explanation begins to sound like an excuse.

The question now facing GPL is simple: what conceivable explanation remains when blackouts persist, generation remains inadequate, the transmission and distribution system remains fragile, and every new problem seems to be met with another announcement rather than a lasting solution?

The public is entitled to ask whether these recurring failures are isolated incidents or evidence of a system that is dangerously unprepared for the demands Guyana is placing upon it.

A “World-Class” Country Cannot Run on Excuses

The Government’s development narrative is ambitious. Guyana, we are told, is becoming a world-class destination for investment. It will diversify beyond oil. It will build industries. It will process raw materials. It will create jobs. It will become a regional center for commerce, services and manufacturing.

These are attractive promises .They are also impossible to fulfil without dependable,affordable and sufficient electricity

Manufacturing does not run on speeches. Factories cannot operate on press releases. Investors do not make multimillion-dollar decisions based on slogans about transformation while production lines, cold-storage facilities, data systems and machinery face the constant threat of outages.

A serious manufacturing economy requires electricity that is stable It requires confidence that a business can sign contracts, employ workers, meet export deadlines and keep machinery operational without being crippled by recurring blackouts.

Guyana is nowhere near that standard today.

It is one thing to aspire to become a manufacturing powerhouse. It is another to possess the energy foundation required to make that aspiration credible. While communities are losing power for hours and sometimes entire days, the country remains light-years away from presenting itself as an industrially reliable jurisdiction.

The energy reality is contradicting the development rhetoric.

The US $800 Million Question

Against this backdrop, GPL has announced an approximately US-$800 -million program to modernize the transmission and distribution network.

The company speaks of new 230-kilovolt transmission lines, new substations, additional 69-kilovolt infrastructure, approximately 350 kilometres of medium-voltage distribution network, feeder upgrades and a smart grid by 2030

There is nothing inherently wrong with these objectives. Guyana urgently needs investments in transmission and distribution. The country’s expanding population, construction boom, new commercial activity, oil-sector development and prospective industrial expansion will place greater strain on an already overstretched grid.

But the issue is not whether improvements are needed. The issue is whether the public has been given sufficient reason to trust that another massive infrastructure program will be prudently designed, competitively procured, properly supervised and delivered on time

US $800 million is not a routine expenditure. It is an enormous national commitment, particularly when compared with the costs repeatedly associated with the Wales gas-to-energy project. It raises an unavoidable question: are Guyanese being asked to accept yet another vast bill because the country failed to plan, maintain and expand its power system before it reached crisis point?

Even more troubling is the apparent request by the gas-to-energy contractors for an additional US $200million to complete the project. If that figure is accurate, the public must be told exactly why the additional money is needed, what work remains outstanding, who bears contractual responsibility for the increased cost, and what revised completion date is being proposed.

There must be no blank cheque.

It is not enough for officials to acknowledge a higher cost while declining to identify how long it will take to spend the additional money—or when Guyanese can finally expect the project’s promised benefits. Cost escalation without a revised, verifiable schedule is not a plan. It is an invitation to uncertainty.

The Failure of Accountability

The people of Guyana are tired of being told to wait.

They have waited for dependable generation. They have waited for upgrades to aged feeders and substations. They have waited for the gas-to-energy project. They have waited for lower electricity costs. They have waited for a modern grid. They have waited while millions and billions are announced, allocated, borrowed and spent.

Meanwhile, they continue to buy generators, inverters, batteries, fuel, surge protectors and replacement appliances out of their own pockets. These are hidden electricity costs imposed on citizens because the national utility has not delivered reliable service.

Every blackout transfers part of GPL’s failure onto the public.

It transfers costs to households that must replace food and damaged electronics. It transfers costs to business owners who lose inventory and revenue. It transfers costs to workers whose productivity depends on reliable connectivity. It transfers costs to patients, the elderly and families caring for vulnerable relatives in unbearable heat.

The Government and GPL cannot credibly claim that Guyana is advancing toward a high-income, industrial future while treating these hardships as routine inconveniences.

A modern country does not simply announce projects. It publishes the evidence that the projects will work.

What GPL Must Disclose

GPL must move beyond carefully managed press conferences and provide the public with a full, accessible account of its plans, finances and obligations.

At a minimum, the company and the Government should publish:

♦ A complete breakdown of the proposed US $800million grid-modernization program, including each project, its location, purpose, estimated cost, funding source and anticipated completion date.

♦ The engineering studies, demand forecasts and reliability assessments used to justify the program.

♦ The procurement method for each major component, including tender documents, bid evaluations, contract awards and beneficial ownership disclosures for major contractors.

♦ Annual reliability targets, including outage frequency, outage duration, feeder performance, restoration times and the number of customers affected.

♦ A public report on every major outage, identifying the cause, affected areas, duration, corrective work, prevention measures and responsibility where negligence is found.

♦ A full accounting of spending already made on generation, substations, transmission and distribution improvements.

♦ The contractual status of the Wales gas-to-energy project, including the reported request for an additional (US\$200) million, the explanation for any cost increase, outstanding work and a revised delivery date.

♦ A clear explanation of who will pay for escalating costs: taxpayers, GPL customers, the Natural Resource Fund, future borrowers or some combination of all four.

Without that disclosure, the public is entitled to view grand new figures with skepticism.

No More Darkness, No More Diversions

The current crisis should be the proverbial straw that breaks the back of GPL’s culture of excuses.

The utility cannot keep cycling through the same formula: a blackout, an explanation, an apology, an announcement, a promise of future works, and then another blackout. Guyanese deserve a utility that anticipates faults, maintains infrastructure, communicates honestly, restores service rapidly and accepts accountability when it fails.

There are only so many times a nation can be told that the future will be brighter while the present remains dark.

If Guyana truly intends to become a manufacturing powerhouse, it must first become a country in which electricity is not a gamble. It must build generation capacity before demand overwhelms supply, reinforce the network before feeders fail, hold contractors accountable before costs balloon and publish the facts before asking citizens to trust another billion-dollar promise.

The country’s ambitions cannot be powered by spin. They must be powered by electricity.

—The Board