Opposition Leader, Aubrey Norton is lamenting the current state of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL), reminiscing upon a time when the country’s premier electricity service provider flourished. This period, he said, was from 2015 to 2020, when the PNCR-led A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) held the reins of government. But the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) Leader’s statement stands in contrast to the governing People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C)’s claim that the company was in financial shambles when it regained power in 2020.
During an interview on News Source over the weekend, Norton said that the power company was transformed into a “profit-making” institution during the coalition era. Not only that, but he also pointed to fewer blackouts during the APNU+AFC’s tenure, claiming that GPL saw substantial improvements in service delivery. He also compared this with the alleged load shedding in 2024, mocking that Guyanese didn’t need “fairy lights” for Christmas because “GPL did it for them.” He made these remarks and others in his response to the $1.3 Trillion 2025 budget presented last week.
However, the PPP/C has consistently claimed that, upon regaining power in late 2020, it inherited a bankrupt GPL from the APNU+AFC government. This claim was repeated in 2022 and formed a major part of the government’s justification for a whopping $4 billion supplemental to bail out the company. That request was approved by the government-dominated National Assembly.
During the debates, government ministers argued that under the management of the then-Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson, GPL had approximately G$13 billion in receivables owed by government ministries and agencies, which were having a crippling effect on the company.
In a letter from the Prime Minster, Mark Phillips, dated May 11, 2022, the official noted that under the stewardship of Patterson, the nation saw “the lack of maintenance on the transmission lines, coupled with the little to no investment in baseload generation capacity”.
Furthermore, the government said that with the absence of a Board of Directors at GPL for almost two years, Minister Patterson was the “sole decision-maker” and, based on statistics from the power company, the results of those decisions were “disastrous.”
