The Ministry of Finance has taken note of a banner carried on the front page of today’s Kaieteur News indicating that the Amaila Falls power plant will not supply electricity to Essequibo and Berbice. This statement, once again and much like many other statements coming out of this media house recently, is simply not true.
Amaila will supply electricity through Sophia to the national grid for distribution. This will include Berbice which is already connected through the Demerara Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS). Additionally, even in advance of Amaila, the government is already working to deliver approximately 10 megawatts of peak solar power to be delivered directly to Regions Five and Six.
Similarly, government is also already working on a project to deliver 8 megawatts of solar power to Essequibo. Furthermore, the master plan for the electricity sector includes linking isolated Essequibo systems with the DBIS by 2026. The banner carried by Kaieteur News today represents just the latest in this tabloid’s continued anti-development campaign based on untruths and inaccuracies and should be denounced and rejected fully.