The majority of citizens across the island who are now without electricity due to the passage of Hurricane Beryl last week should expect their supply to be restored by this weekend, portfolio minister Daryl Vaz has advised.

However, those in the hardest-hit parishes, particularly St Elizabeth, are not likely to see a resumption of service before early August as the scale of the damage and weather conditions are hampering restoration works. Southern Clarendon, parts of Manchester and Westmoreland are the other areas that suffered extensive damage.

Vaz said that the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) has projected 97 per cent restoration by Saturday, July 13 and progress is now at 83 per cent, with 573,000 of 682,000 customers now connected.

“There is a special team that has been put together
— a task force which is aiming to have those areas restored in full by August 5 at the latest, which puts us at just about four weeks,” Vaz told journalists at a press conference held at his Trafalgar Road office in St Andrew on Monday.

He said that the team has been facing challenges with restoration in some areas, especially St Elizabeth. “They have had to abandon assessments, both from the air and from the ground, because of adverse weather conditions.”

He noted, however, that JPS has advised that Black River Hospital in St Elizabeth “will be back up and running” by Tuesday night; “midnight to latest early Wednesday, the 10th of July”.

“In bringing back Black River Hospital, that will bring back most of the town of Black River, and once that has happened, they would have broken the back of the issues and be able to resolve transmission issues going through,” Vaz said.

He said he was aware of the frustration and the feeling of abandonment by citizens. However, he pointed out that specifically south Clarendon, parts of Manchester, and St Elizabeth “are very, very badly damaged and… because of the weather elements, we have not been able to get in there and do what they need to do”.

“We are on it. I understand fully the anxiety, the inconvenience, the frustration, and all that goes with it when you don’t have regular supply of light and, of course, without light your water supplies are disrupted. We are making arrangements and I’ve been told by JPS that most of the water supplies will be back up in short order. They are working along with NWC (National Water Commission), as they are working with the Ministry of Health with hospitals and other essential services,” he added.

In the meantime, Vaz said that a major issue that came out of Monday’s Cabinet meeting was whether or not JPS will need external assistance to get the job done in the shortest possible time.

“We deliberated a long time on it. JPS says that they would continue the assessment until Friday in St Elizabeth when they’ll be able to complete and, at that point, they will advise us.

“There are mixed feelings but we have to remember that JPS is a private company and the truth of the matter is that we have to respect their assessment as they have the technical ability. Yes, the Government can get involved and impose, but then we would have to take responsibility for the results of that, which may not necessarily give us the desired result, especially if it is not something that we have full consensus on. I have full confidence in Chairman [Damian] Obiglio,” he said.

Vaz noted, however, that based on the timelines given, the Government is going to hold the JPS to account, “because we feel like these are reasonable timelines, especially in line with what has transpired, and when we look back at previous weather events and hurricanes… and you see the time it took to restore electricity”.

Obiglio said the company believes it has the capacity to carry out the work, noting that all JPS employees went into the field or to the offices to work on electricity restoration.

“We had our 1,200 employees, including myself, working on the operational centre to assess and plan the restoration of the customers,” he said.

“We have all the materials needed to do the restoration, even for the most affected area in the southern coast, basically in St Elizabeth, in particular. We have all the poles, we have all the transformers
— all in the island. As we speak, they are being redeployed from all our satellite stores into that area. We also have the human resources. We have the JPS employees plus the contractors that are already mobilised for some cleaning activities, but also mobilising massively during this week so as to comply with the schedule that we gave to the Government,” he said.

The JPS chairman also said that the company understands the frustration of being without power “and the fact that we have 83 per cent of customers connected doesn’t solve your problem if you’re on the other percentage and we understand that”.

“We know who you are or where you are, we know that you don’t have power. We know that some of the roads are still blocked and we will be cleaning them, but you have to understand… our first step that is very important is to assess the situation, to understand the extent of the damage. The second one is to restore essential services, and on that we are working in coordination with the ministry in water, hospitals, and telecommunications,” he said.

He said electricity had been restored to most hospitals, and has been the most challenging and most important work the company has been undertaking. “Linstead Hospital, we are making a push to try to have it today (Monday). It is challenging…[but] we think we can do it,” he said.

Giving an update on telecommunications providers, Vaz noted that Digicel, as of 10:00 am Monday, is at 84.7 per cent population coverage; 69 per cent mobile network, which is 94.5 per cent consumer and 92 per cent business.

“As it relates to Flow, we are up to 80 per cent population coverage islandwide, and they have restored 47,000 fixed-line customers,” he said.