THE Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), the light and power company, said yesterday that while electricity been had restored to most areas, the power system for the entire country remained unstable and would result in power cuts at intervals.

Speaking at a media briefing at the company’s Knutsford Boulevard head offices in Kingston yesterday, president and chief executive officer of the JPS, Damian Obligio, said the power outages were likely because the company had not finished restoring power to transmission lines and substations.

“.We have fixed the main transmission lines but the backup lines need to be restored. It’s like driving a car without a spare tyre; if we have a puncture we will have customers out of service. We need to correct some defects from the hurricane’s impact,” the JPS president told reporters.

Obligio said that while the impact to the company’s generation asset was “minimal” the transmission system had suffered “widespread” damage with 60 of the 72 lines being affected.

The JPS president said there had been “extensive” damage on the distribution lines while all feeder lines suffering damage. Obligio said approximately 3,000 of the JPS’ poles were either broken or lean in addition to 150 kilometres of broken lines that will have to be repaired completely.

In the meantime, Obligio said a comparison of the restoration efforts after Dean and Hurricane Ivan in 2004 showed a higher performance this time.

The company said 78 per cent of customers had their power restored on day seven after Hurricane Dean while for the same seven-day period after Hurricane Ivan only 50 per cent had their power restored.

“This time we were able to restore the system at a faster rate. We were able to stock our warehouses to respond on time. We were prepared for a system like Dean,” Obligio said.

He said, however, that while it was “not a gaurantee” it was expected that by September 9 all customers across the island should be receiving electricity, even though the situation was still tenuous for St Elizabeth, Manchester and Clarendon, which had been hardest hit.

Meanwhile, the JPS said it would be closing the restoration process in Westmoreland, Hanover, St James and Trelawny yesterday.

However, the JPS boss said it was highly unlikely that all polling stations would have electricity on election day, Septeber 3.

“We haven’t been managing our efforts thinking on the elections; we have been managing the restoration effort and trying to restore the power to hospitals, water pumping and police stations mainly. I don’t think any community would like to hear that we have been favouring one over the other one. We are not favouring anybody in our work,” Obligio said.

The JPS said the estimated cost of the hurricane damage would be a little less than the US$7 million in the company’s self-insurance fund and assured that “there was not a high probability” that this sum would be overshot.