Guyana's national electricity provider has warned that a construction boom sweeping the country is producing a dangerous pattern of deaths and injuries around its high-voltage network, with at least two people killed this year after coming into contact with live lines.

Gary Hall, safety, health, environmental management and operational support divisional director at Guyana Power and Light, told a press conference in Georgetown on Monday that the company had recorded a series of what he called macabre and avoidable incidents involving construction machinery, scaffolding and vehicles operating too close to overhead wires. He said the company had lost at least two people this year to accidental contact with its network, and noted that 2023 alone had seen around six or seven fatalities of a similar kind.

One of the deaths this year occurred in South Georgetown, where a metal scaffold rolled away from a building under construction and struck one of GPL's 13.8 kilovolt distribution lines. The worker was thrown to the ground and his clothing caught fire. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Two colleagues working alongside him were taken to Georgetown Public Hospital with serious injuries. In January, a worker employed by a telecommunications company was electrocuted in the Kitty area after his equipment came too close to a high-voltage line.

Hall said that modern construction practices had changed the nature of the risk. The growing use of high-sided trucks to offload building materials means workers now often need only to bring equipment near a 69,000-volt line, rather than touch it directly, for a fatal arc to occur. He said GPL had gathered numerous images and videos, many already circulating on social media, showing shipping containers dangling close to overhead cables, cement pumping trucks working beneath live wires, and vehicles dragging down poles and lines as they pass beneath them.

These incidents are not confined to loss of life. Collisions between vehicles and network infrastructure regularly sever cables and topple poles, cutting power to thousands of customers and adding to public frustration with a utility already under scrutiny over the reliability of its supply. GPL has pointed out that it does not own every pole or overhead line in the country, since telecommunications companies and other utilities share much of the same physical network, meaning some incidents involve infrastructure beyond its direct control.

In response, GPL has been working with the Ministry of Labour to run safety sessions for contractors around the country, including in Bartica. The company said it had trained staff from several firms operating near its lines, among them Chinese contractors working on the East Bank public road and the private telecommunications operator ENet. Hall argued that technical fixes and training sessions would not be enough on their own, and called instead for what he described as a cultural change in how contractors, equipment operators and ordinary drivers behave around electrical infrastructure.

The warnings come against a backdrop of wider concern about workplace safety in Guyana, where the Ministry of Labour recorded thirteen deaths and sixty-four non-fatal incidents across all workplaces between January and April this year. The country's construction sector has expanded rapidly on the back of oil-driven economic growth, drawing large numbers of migrant workers, including many from Cuba, into sites where supervision has struggled to keep pace with the volume of activity.

GPL has not said whether it is considering additional physical safeguards, such as expanded clearance zones or more prominent line markings, beyond the training and outreach programmes already under way. For now, the company's message to contractors and the public rests on caution rather than new engineering controls, a distinction that may determine whether this year's death toll rises further before the building boom slows.

‍