The disruption, which began around 05:47 am Friday morning, drew sharp criticisms from citizens who took to social media to vent their outrage at the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL).

Many questioned the continued instability of the electricity grid and pointed out recent investments in powerships. “Still facing blackouts even with two powerships and ‘excess capacity’? Guyana Power & Light Inc. says the system is improved, but power cuts and damaging fluctuations continue,” one social media user posted. Another said: “Guyanese deserve better, consistent electricity is not a luxury, it’s a right.” Another user expressed disbelief at the scale of the outage, stating: “Only last week GPL gave out 422 million US dollars in contracts, now there’s massive blackout, although millions are paid for two powerships… This is outrageous and bare incompetence and (expletive).”

One affected Kitty resident, 28-year-old Clive, said he lost five hours of paid online work due to the outage. “At around 5:47 a.m, while doing some online work for a company that is depending on me, blackout came. The light came on back in 20 minutes. Around 7:10 a.m, it came off again and did not come on back until 12:55 p.m,” he said.

The blackout also affected access to an important national address by President Irfaan Ali, who announced a $10 billion initiative to help citizens who have fallen behind on their National Insurance Scheme (NIS) contributions. With Wi-Fi and electricity down in many areas, numerous citizens were unable to view the broadcast, which started around 9:49 a.m. Ironically, GPL streamed the announcement from their Facebook page. Subsequently, at a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo did not hold back when asked about the blackout. “Well, I was very upset with them because they have power in their system… they told me that they had a problem at the Kingston substation and some issues with the battery there,” Jagdeo said. He added: “It has nothing to do with the availability of power… but they developed a problem in the system today.” (Kaieteur News)