With approximately 26,000 Jamaica Public Service customers across all parishes outside of St Elizabeth yet to be restored to the national grid following the passage of Hurricane Beryl on July 3, Energy Minister Daryl Vaz says the light and power company must this week intensify its restoration efforts to get Jamaicans out of the dark.

The JPS has approximately 38,000 customers in St Elizabeth with fewer than 20 per cent of that number seeing their electricity restored so far.

“JPS is telling me, a few days, for the rest of the country, but the truth is that 10 days have gone after two days for assessment and, therefore, we are now in a crisis situation as it relates to the restoration of light and water. Living without light and water for more than seven days is a crisis.

“So, I want Jamaica to understand that we are fully aware of that and that, whereas I feel that we have done a good job so far in terms of the coordination of the response, there is still a lot of work left to do and a lot of people are suffering as a result of the loss of light and water,” Vaz told the Jamaica Observer on Sunday.

The energy minister’s observations come after he toured some of the worst-affected areas in Clarendon, Manchester, and St Elizabeth on Wednesday with representatives of the JPS, Digicel and Flow along with a walk-through of the light and power company’s control centre on Friday.

“I was shaken to my core. I was emotionally distressed to see the conditions of persons in the aftermath of Beryl. So, I am happy that we were able to make some significant inroads into the repairs. There has been significant work done between my visit on Wednesday and now,” Vaz said.

According to the energy minister, the light and power company now needs to level with Jamaicans about the real number of citizens still left in the dark.

“What I am pushing for, is to move away from the percentages, so when JPS says they have restored 96/97 per cent of the island’s electricity that doesn’t give a sense of distress, that actually makes the numbers look good, which is good, but the bottom line is that there are thousands of persons across Jamaica who don’t have light,“ Vaz stated.

“So, what I want to do this week is to stress to JPS the need to restore the rest of the island in parallel with the worst-affected areas, while we wait on those to come back, but there is too many pockets across Jamaica outside of the worst-affected areas that still do not have light at this time,” the energy minister continued.

He said the week ahead is crucial for the JPS.

“I would say that this week once again is a critical week based on the amount of time that has elapsed and we need to make sure that the coordinated effort continues but intensifies by the JPS,” Vaz added.

The energy minister, in the meantime, noted that since his visit to the company’s control room on Friday, JPS has sought assistance from the bauxite companies to access their expertise by way of engineers and manpower.

“They have gotten additional contractors outside of the existing subcontractors that they have in normal times and I will be reviewing that again when I get the report today to take to Cabinet in relation to a review of their ability to pull us through this in the shortest possible time,” Vaz told the Observer.

Vaz on Friday, following his tour, said he had informed the team at JPS that they should provide him “with a schedule of the restoration of electricity to the people of Jamaica by parish, community, district, street, and lane”.

“It has been over a week and many Jamaicans are still without power. I understand that the network suffered significant damage, nonetheless power must be restored to the people,” he stated then.

The minister further highlighted that the JPS should submit an up-to-date and effective communications plan to ensure that clear, accurate information is shared with the public.

In underscoring that he was not being critical of the JPS, Vaz pointed out that in the American state of Texas, which was hit by Beryl at Category 1 last Monday, at peak outage, more than 2.2 million people were without power, while as of Saturday afternoon, more than 550,000 customers were still without power.

According to information from the website of the light and power company, it provides electricity service to 680,000 residential and business customers through an integrated system that includes several power-generating plants, and an islandwide transmission and distribution network.