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TWO of the more experienced line technicians of Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL) were due to leave the country last evening to join the Grenada relief task force being assembled by the Saint Lucia-based Caribbean Electric Utilities Services Corporation (CARILEC).
They volunteered their services after CARILEC requested resources from GPL for its Hurricane Action Plan (CHAP) in the wake of Hurricane Ivan’s devastation of Grenada on September 7, GPL said yesterday. Hunter, a line foreman attached to GPL’s Victoria T&D Outpost and Moore, line foreman from the company’s Transmission and Distribution Outpost at its sub-station at Number 53 Village, Berbice, will spend three weeks in Grenada lending their well-tested expertise to the rebuilding of the storm-ravaged island’s electricity transmission and distribution networks. The GPL crew will complement a human resource team CARILEC is setting up from volunteers from utility agencies within and outside of the Caribbean. GPL has been an active member of CARILEC since 1995. "Both men have considerable experience in line maintenance and servicing as well as in constructing networks and installing the various pole top components necessary for a stable power supply," GPL said in a statement yesterday. They are both products of GPL’s Apprenticeship Scheme. The sending of the GPL crew to Grenada marks yet another of Guyana’s contributions to the rebuilding of the spice island after Ivan the Terrible killed some 20 people, injured many more and destroyed over 90 percent of the spice island on September 7. Among other things, Guyana has so far contributed or has committed to assisting Grenada in: the shipping of 26 containers of supplies through a Government/Private Sector initiative; the shipping of containers of relief items by numerous non-governmental organizations; the converting of a shipment of sugar from GUYSUCO valued at $40 million into a gift, part likely to be sold abroad by the Keith Mitchell administration to raise funds for other emergency works; the six-month deployment of more than 100 soldiers on the ground in Grenada; the upkeep and schooling here of Grenada students preparing to write CXC exams; assuming responsibility for some of Grenada’s commitments to other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries; the disbursement of part of a loan that Guyana has already negotiated with the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB); Government has also offered to provide special assistance to Guyanese living in Grenada and to fly home those who lost virtually everything and have decided to return, thus easing the pressure on the Grenada government to provide scarce resources for the island’s 90,000 inhabitants. |
The technicians, Colin Hunter and John Geoffrey Moore, will join the task force in Grenada as representatives of both GPL and Guyana.
