Guyana Power & Light has formally demanded $30.6 million from the Chinese contractor it holds responsible for Sunday evening’s nationwide blackout, the utility confirmed this week.
The penalty claim comes as the Public Utilities Commission released findings that GPL is operating at roughly 30 percent efficiency — a figure that puts the country’s electricity grid among the least reliable in the region despite years of reform announcements and capacity additions.
Sunday’s outage cut power across Demerara and parts of Berbice for several hours, disrupting businesses, hospitals, and households already coping with rolling load-shedding through the dry season. GPL has attributed the failure to a fault on contractor-installed equipment and says the $30.6M demand reflects penalty clauses written into the original supply agreement.
The PUC’s 30-percent efficiency finding has not yet been formally challenged by GPL, but the utility’s leadership has previously argued that legacy infrastructure, fuel quality issues, and demand growth tied to oil-sector expansion all factor into the headline number.
Consumer groups have called for the PUC report to be tabled in the National Assembly so that the gap between contractor accountability and structural underperformance can be addressed in the same conversation. Opposition voices have asked why a single contractor penalty is being publicized while the broader 30-percent figure goes unanswered.
The Ministry of Public Works has not yet indicated whether the contractor dispute will be pursued through arbitration or local courts.
Source: Kaieteur News, Guyana Chronicle (April 30, 2026)