LUCEA, Hanover — The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) has reported that December was a challenging month for the company in the parishes of Hanover and Westmoreland.

The company’s reliability technician, Bruce Barrett, told the monthly meeting of the Hanover Municipal Corporation recently that the challenges faced in both parishes were due mainly to high winds and heavy rainfall.

“As we know, the month of December has been one of not just excitement, it had its challenges for JPS in that we had to contend with the heavy rains, extremely high winds, and all these conditions made our job more challenging. So that in itself limit some of the things that we could have done better,” stated Barrett.

He said the company had infrastructure challenges in the West End and Beach Road sections of Negril in Westmoreland.

The resort town of Negril is shared with the parishes of Hanover and Westmoreland.

“We concentrated a lot of our efforts because of situations that existed then. In the Negril area, we looked at the West End section of Negril and Beach Road because we had some amount of challenges down there which required that we attend to even the infrastructure. We ended up changing up to six poles in the Negril area. So, you see how we were kept busy in the Negril area,” Barrett said.

Last month residents of West End staged two days of fiery protest following the deaths of 21-year-old Oshane Powell and his cousin, 19-year-old Renaldo “Barry” Johnson in a freak accident in which an energised utility wire reportedly fell on the motorcycle they were driving.

In addition, Barrett told the corporation that the company was also faced with vegetation issues which affected power lines and poles in Hanover.

He noted that “because of limitations”, Hanover and St James currently share the specialised unit used for bushing, adding that most of the time St James is in possession of the unit.

He said the lack of a dedicated vehicle for Hanover was brought to the attention of the company’s President and CEO Emanuel DaRosa, who visited the parish last week.

“We highlighted that concern to him and requested that if it is even one vehicle, we would like for him to consider providing Hanover with a bushing truck. So we hope that it did not fall on deaf ears, so he will give serious consideration to the matter,” Barrett said.

Frequent fluctuations in power supply in Hanover since late last year had led to the Hanover Municipal Corporation writing the company to express their concerns.

Meanwhile, Barrett also disclosed that next month the company will be embarking on a programme aimed at replacing existing high-pressure sodium street lamps with light emitting diodes (LED).