Dear Editor,
The assurances provided by the Chief Executive Officer of Guyana Power and Light Inc., Mr. Kesh Nandlall, on December 8, 2025, in the national newspapers, ring hollow against the daily reality faced by countless Guyanese households enduring unreliable electricity during what should be a season of celebration and light. While Mr. Nandlall speaks of GPL being in a “strong position to meet seasonal demand,” even a layperson understands that generating ten times the required power means nothing if the infrastructure cannot transmit and distribute it reliably to consumers. Without delivery, the result is zero.
What ordinary consumers—those without the luxury of backup generators—are experiencing is persistent blackouts, morning, noon, and night. Their reality tells a story of systemic failure in fulfilling the fundamental mandate of a power utility, a failure that reflects poorly on leadership. When the CEO chooses to spend hours publicly engaged in non-essential activities, such as culinary demonstrations alongside political figures, rather than focusing on operational oversight, it raises serious questions about his priorities. The public rightly expects its highly paid (more than $20 million a year) utility leaders to be fixated on keeping the lights on, not on performing for cameras. He is not a politician and there is no excuse for his to be “pampazetting like the classroom clown” for the cameras.
The issue is not the necessity of maintenance, but its evident failure to produce a stable electricity supply at the point of consumption. Mathematical projections about generation capacity from the CEO offer little comfort to a family with spoiled food, a small business losing revenue, or a community left repeatedly in the dark. Does management truly grasp the hardship for a working family surviving on a modest income, who’s carefully saved Christmas perishable provisions are ruined by an unreliable power supply? Public trust erodes not because of necessary maintenance, but because of the glaring chasm between corporate promises and the lived experience of citizens.
Furthermore, the spectacle of a highly paid CEO of a critical public monopoly engaging in political publicity activities while core services falter is more than a distraction—it is an insult to the intelligence and suffering of the populace. The singular duty of such a public servant is to deliver reliable electricity. The public pays for actual performance, not performance art. When that essential duty is failed, no public relations campaign can compensate.
This apparent indifference to the public’s plight points to a deeper institutional and governmental failure. GPL’s continued instability, especially during periods of high domestic demand, suggests a profound deficit in accountability, foresight, and effective crisis management. It is unacceptable to dismiss persistent outages as mere side effects of maintenance when the promised reliability remains elusive. The people of Guyana deserve a power provider that prioritizes engineering solutions over public relations gimmicks, and substantive service over symbolic gestures. They deserve executives who are judged solely on their ability to deliver consistent electricity—a benchmark that currently remains unmet. Until the lights stay on consistently, all official assurances are merely empty words, and any diversion from this core mission constitutes a neglect of duty.
It is deeply concerning if, in today’s Guyana, we are witnessing a return to the Burnham era where public servants are diverted from their technical and administrative duties for political spectacle like cleaning the trenches in Hope Estate. This is not progress. Rather, it echoes the old tactic of panem et circenses—bread and circuses—distracting the populace with trivialities while essential services decay. Guyana deserves better than leaders who fiddle while the lights go out.