The vulture has long been described as the scavenger of the earth. It is known to remove the dead from the surface of the earth. In some societies, people left their dead as meal for the vultures. There was a time when the turkey vulture, one of the large vultures, roamed coastal Guyana. People who walked along the seawalls would see dozens of these large birds either perched on the walls or feeding on some carcass.
People in the rural communities would simply dump their dead animals into the waterways to be washed out to the Atlantic. This practice was so common that the vultures were a constant sight along the seawalls. The turkey vulture was so named because of its long clean neck not dissimilar from the domestic turkey. It is a scavenger and feeds almost exclusively on carrion. It finds its food using its keen eyes and sense of smell, flying low enough to detect the gasses produced by the beginnings of the process of decay in dead animals.
Over the years these vultures have all but disappeared from the coast. Some said that the use of DDT killed them off. They are largely seen in hinterland Guyana. But Guyana is not their only home. They are found all over South America.
When the government through Guyana Power and Light hit coastal Guyana with one of the worst power outages in recent times the nation was informed that the vultures had returned to the coast. Something or a lot of these things, had died. There was no report of dead animals. It turned out that the vultures had been attracted to Guyana Power and Light. The power company had to be dead and was now attracting the vultures.
A statement from the Guyana Power Company carried the report that the company had to install shields/deterrents on the L21 Transmission Line to address the proliferation of vultures on the transmission towers. This was the first time that the nation was aware that the power company was under attack from these vultures. It was widely known that it was dying a long time ago. When the Kingston power station was the main generating facility in Demerara there was the suggestion that it should be pushed into the Demerara River.
Eventually the PPP government built a new generating station at Kingston in 2009 for US$30 million. Winston Brassington and the then Prime Minister Sam Hinds proclaimed that blackouts were now things of the past. They either lied or were very premature in their comment. Soon they built another power station, this time at Vreed-en-Hoop. There were generators on the west side of the river at that time because the society needed more electricity.
This power station cost US$35M and was to generate 26 MW. The power company, according to its head, Bharrat Dindyal, recorded 127,000 new customers from 2005 and by the end of 2014 the figure had increased to 177,000.
Again, the pronouncement came that blackouts would end. This power station would generate power to Moleson Creek on the Corentyne and to communities on East Coast Demerara and East Bank Demerara. Apparently, the infusion of power did not really help the power situation because blackouts continued. The company continued to fail.
Since then there have been expenditures of billions of dollars to keep the system going. Guyana then paid US$1 million to mobilise a power barge and hisse the operational cost for no more than two years. By May this year the situation should have improved drastically. It is now widely believed that the company has died and is decaying because it attracted the vultures. Vultures feed exclusively on carrion.
People either bury or cremate their dead. The government is keeping its own. Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo recently announced that the government was going to parliament to seek US$66 million for the power company. This is more than the cost of building the Kingston and the Vreed-en-Hoop power stations. Of course, this approach comes despite the largest budget in the nation’s history. This year’s budget is some 30 per cent larger than last year’s.
Of interest is that when the teachers sought money for their increased hisse the government said that no money was available in the budget for such an increase. By the same token, no money should have been available to feed the vulture-prone GPL. However, Jagdeo has shown that where there is a will there is a way. The money to be sought is a dozen times larger than what the teachers would have got had the government acquiesced.
But even as the government is seeking so much more money to keep GPL from being put into the ground or into a crematorium it is pursuing a US$2 billion gas to shore project. This project, at the inception should have been completed this year. It has now been projected to be completed by the end of next year.
The embarrassing thing is that the US bank approached by the government for a loan to help finance this project seems to have turned away from the project. Something seems to be wrong with the feasibility. So there is the fear that Guyana’s energy situation will continue well into someone’s next lifetime.