Sci­ence, En­er­gy, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and Trans­port Min­is­ter, Daryl Vaz,  says while the gov­ern­ment will do every­thing legal­ly pos­si­ble to re­in­force the abil­i­ty of the Ja­maica Pub­lic Ser­vice (JPS) to re­store pow­er across the is­land, near­ly three weeks af­ter the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Beryl, he is urg­ing the com­pa­ny to  “pull out all stops” to do so.

“I make no apolo­gies in stat­ing in this House that I have very lit­tle con­fi­dence in the ca­pac­i­ty of the JPS to ef­fect full restora­tion in the time­lines need­ed. While my pow­ers as Min­is­ter may be lim­it­ed with re­spect to this pri­vate com­pa­ny and the de­ploy­ment of their teams, this gov­ern­ment will do every­thing legal­ly pos­si­ble to en­sure that we re­in­force the abil­i­ty of the JPS to have pow­er re­stored across the is­land as soon as pos­si­ble,” he told leg­is­la­tors on Tues­day.

Hur­ri­cane Beryl caused wide­spread dam­age and death in Ja­maica on Ju­ly 3 and the au­thor­i­ties have said that the lack of elec­tric­i­ty is not on­ly im­pact­ing cit­i­zens but al­so the abil­i­ty of the Na­tion­al Wa­ter Com­mis­sion (NWC) to ful­ly ser­vice its cus­tomers across all parish­es.

Vaz said al­so that sev­er­al peo­ple have med­ical con­di­tions that re­quire elec­tric­i­ty for the re­frig­er­a­tion of med­ica­tion or use of ma­chines.

“This can­not con­tin­ue and with the help of our re­gion­al part­ners now in the is­land, I urge the util­i­ty provider to pull out all stops to en­sure they meet the dead­lines and ex­pec­ta­tions to re­store all NWC pumps and Na­tion­al Ir­ri­ga­tion Com­mis­sion (NIC) pumps for ir­ri­ga­tion for the farm­ers of Ja­maica,” he said.

“If wa­ter is life, then the JPS must recog­nise the cur­rent po­si­tion as life-threat­en­ing. This is not just fig­u­ra­tive but lit­er­al. Sev­er­al per­sons are sub­ject to med­ical con­di­tions that re­quire elec­tric­i­ty whether it be for re­frig­er­a­tion or en­er­gy pur­pos­es.”

Vaz said that he is in con­tact with the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) for sup­port “as I need to make sure that JPS has the ca­pac­i­ty to ef­fect full restora­tion in the time­lines need­ed, which is now”.

Vaz said that he is await­ing the re­port of the out­come of a meet­ing be­tween the JPS and the Of­fice of Util­i­ties Reg­u­la­tion (OUR) and that ‘based on the re­sults of that, it is my in­ten­tion to meet with the man­age­ment, board and share­hold­ers of JPS so that they can fur­ther un­der­stand my con­cerns and for them to give me a de­tailed sched­ule of lo­ca­tions for cus­tomers still not con­nect­ed and a firm sched­ule with time­lines for them to ad­dress”.

The JPS said an es­ti­mat­ed 19,000 cus­tomers, not in­clud­ing St. Eliz­a­beth, re­main with­out elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply, even as Vaz ac­knowl­edged that the in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing elec­tric­i­ty restora­tion may be in­com­plete.

Vaz was al­so crit­i­cal of JPS for is­su­ing es­ti­mat­ed bills to cus­tomers and for hint­ing that it in­tends to use force ma­jeure to re­coup loss­es. This is al­lowed in its li­cence in the event there is an act of God, such as a hur­ri­cane.

Vaz said that it was un­con­scionable and im­moral for the com­pa­ny to seek to ob­tain re­lief from its oblig­a­tions un­der the cur­rent li­cence but is yet to out­line any form of resti­tu­tion or re­prieve for its cus­tomers who have been with­out elec­tric­i­ty for three weeks.

“Ja­maica should nev­er be put in this po­si­tion again, where a util­i­ty li­cence grant­ed seem­ing­ly pro­tects the provider more than the cus­tomers. The JPS li­cence comes up for re-ne­go­ti­a­tion in 2027 and we must make sure, as a coun­try, that any new li­cence pro­tects the peo­ple and not just JPS,” he said.

Vaz told leg­is­la­tors that for con­text, FLOW and Dig­i­cel have both com­mu­ni­cat­ed their own mit­iga­tive and restora­tive mea­sures to the gov­ern­ment and their cus­tomers.

“We hope and ex­pect that JPS will be moved to do the same and do the right thing and do it now,” Vaz said.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter said he un­der­stood the frus­tra­tions of res­i­dents in some ar­eas that have been demon­strat­ing for the re­turn of var­i­ous ser­vices, not­ing how­ev­er “these demon­stra­tions will not help.

“Cur­rent­ly, I have the util­i­ty provider re­quest­ing leave to avoid ar­eas for fear of the safe­ty of their teams. These demon­stra­tions will on­ly serve to put your com­mu­ni­ties fur­ther down on the list for restora­tion by the JPS as they will think their safe­ty and that of their teams are at risk.

“While I un­der­stand all the frus­tra­tion be­ing faced by my fel­low Ja­maicans, I as­sure you that I am in con­tact with all 62 Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and Cab­i­net re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that we hold JPS ac­count­able to ef­fect the time­ly restora­tion of elec­tric­i­ty to all com­mu­ni­ties,” Vaz told Par­lia­ment.

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Jul 24, CMC – 

CMC/af/ir/2024