Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les has as­sured To­bag­o­ni­ans that im­prove­ments will be made to the sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty to the is­land.

The Min­is­ter took a tour T&TEC Pow­er Sta­tion at the Cove Eco-In­dus­tri­al Plant in To­ba­go yes­ter­day where it was re­vealed that a frog in­fes­ta­tion and falling trees are some of the is­sues which have con­tributed to the pow­er out­ages.

The vis­it came af­ter Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis took the au­thor­i­ty to task fol­low­ing a se­ries of dis­rup­tions in the sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty on the is­land. The lat­est be­ing last Wednes­day when most of the is­land lost pow­er.

Fol­low­ing the tour, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er T&TEC Kelvin Ram­sook ex­plained that last week’s dis­rup­tion oc­curred dur­ing the re-in­stal­la­tion of equip­ment that was re­cent­ly over­hauled.

“In the process of com­mis­sion­ing the ma­chine had both of our tech­ni­cal staff and the tech­ni­cal staff from abroad recom­mis­sion­ing the ma­chine which de­vel­oped a fault.”

He as­sured that the staff at the plant will con­tin­ue to work on im­prov­ing the stan­dards of de­liv­ery to the is­land as col­lec­tive­ly the is­land is ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing 90 watts of elec­tric­i­ty which is well over the cur­rent of the is­land.

“The de­mand in To­ba­go av­er­ages around 50 megawatts so what you have avail­able in terms of in­stalled ca­pac­i­ty is al­most twice your de­mand so in terms of gen­er­a­tion that is well ad­e­quate.”

Sec­re­tary for Set­tle­ments, Ur­ban Re­new­al and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Clarence Ja­cob al­so gave some in­sight in­to some of the oth­er rea­sons for the fre­quent pow­er out­ages

“We have an in­fes­ta­tion of frogs which caus­es the break­ers on the fus­es on the poles to blow al­so we have some of those which are of nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, we have trees falling burst­ing lines ma­jor­i­ty in the east and the north­side, we al­so have land­slips which will cause dis­rup­tions as well.”

The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter said that with­in re­cent times the Chief Sec­re­tary has com­mu­ni­cat­ed to him the prob­lems be­ing faced by the is­land – es­pe­cial­ly in the east. And he felt it nec­es­sary to come to To­ba­go since he be­lieved that a “min­is­te­r­i­al pres­ence” was need­ed to demon­strate that his min­istry will do what was nec­es­sary to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, the is­sue will be mon­i­tored.

While Min­is­ter Gon­salves cau­tious­ly avoid­ed promis­ing that there would be no more dis­rup­tions, he said To­bag­o­ni­ans ought not to be­come com­fort­able with dis­rup­tions in their elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply.