MINISTER of Science, Energy, Telecommunications and Transport Daryl Vaz is still fuming over what he called Jamaica Public Service’s (JPS) tardiness in restoring electricity to some customers who have been without power since Hurricane Beryl struck the country on July 3.

At the same time, Vaz said he is not pleased with the length of time it took JPS to restore power to customers following last Friday’s squall line which downed several poles and power lines and deprived some customers of electricity for more than 20 hours.

“I really don’t feel that JPS is moving at the speed that a disaster deserves,” Vaz said in an interview with the Jamaica Observer on Sunday, as he continued to chastise the company for the slow pace at which power restoration is being done following Beryl.

He said that coming out of a meeting with JPS management and directors last Friday, he is still dissatisfied with JPS’s performance.

“What is very clear to me is that after [more than] three weeks JPS is still lagging behind. They have missed the targets that they set and it’s of major concern to me because they did not show me, going into the fourth week, that they had additional resources, especially manpower; they still are using the same that have missed the targets,” he said.

Even worse, Vaz said, according to information from his ministry, JPS is paying rates which are significantly below industry rates, “and that is concerning, because I can’t understand how in a disaster you would not pay and incentivise the workers to be able to carry out the work faster and get an incentive for that. That in itself leaves more questions than answers”.

He stressed that JPS cannot continue to operate in the manner in which it has without sanctions and is calling on the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) to conduct a thorough audit of the light and power company.

“My call is on the OUR to do what they were mandated to do. They are the regulatory arm. And they need to do a fulsome audit of JPS and every condition under the licence and report to the country what the findings are. It is unacceptable that JPS can be carrying on the way they are carrying on and have no sanctions whatsoever,” he said.

Friday’s squall line seemed to add to Vaz’s fury, and he is expected to summon OUR to Cabinet today (Monday) “to discuss what happened to cause more than 10,000 customers to be out of power for some 20 hours after the wind”.

The OUR is also expected to provide information on JPS’s maintenance schedule.

Vaz argued that the same licence which JPS uses to send estimated bills to customers also requires that the company maintains the power lines and change light poles, but this is not being done, pointing out that “if you look across Jamaica, you will see the same poles that you’ve been seeing for decades”.

He further argued that one of the reasons so many areas that were not hit by the hurricane and not adversely affected have had major issues with downed poles and downed lines and trees and shrubs falling on the lines is because JPS is not doing the required maintenance as its contract stipulates.

“This was very clear in the squall that we had on Friday night. In certain areas, specifically Kingston and St Andrew, there was either breeze and rain or breeze alone, and it didn’t last very long. And in that you saw what happened in relation to the situation on Waterloo Road, where lines and poles went down all along the corridor.

“That is exactly the point that I’m making, that they are not maintaining their infrastructure. The worst part, Kingston [and] St Andrew, is almost fully restored from Beryl, and yet still it took JPS 22 hours — from 8:00 o’clock on Friday night to 6:00 pm on Saturday afternoon to restore areas in Kingston and St Andrew. That is totally absolutely unacceptable. And once again shows the situation that they are not putting in place the necessary resources to respond to the customers that they have, in and out of Beryl,” he said.

In a media release on Sunday, JPS said its teams responded almost immediately after the squall to address power outages in some parishes. It said the work to restore affected customers continued on Saturday.

“According to our information, squall lines, which can be quite destructive, did affect some of our infrastructure. While we don’t have a complete picture of the extent of the damage incurred, we are aware that approximately 10,000 customers were affected — located in sections of the parishes of Kingston and St Andrew, St Catherine, Clarendon, St Ann, and St Elizabeth,” JPS’s Senior Vice-President of Energy Delivery Blaine Jarrett said.

He noted that up to Saturday night the company had successfully restored about half of this number and is continuing to restore the remainder of customers as well as those affected by Hurricane Beryl.

Vaz argued, too, that while JPS’s payment of dividends “is all well and good… it needs to be held accountable to reinvest some of the profits in maintenance of the grid so that it can stop sucking the blood life out of their customers”.

Said Vaz: “JPS simply adheres to the condition of its licence which has a monetary benefit to them, and for those that have an expense, it seems to ignore. Hence why the state of the infrastructure of JPS is in the state that it is. They are reinvesting none of their profits into making sure that we have a safe, efficient grid,” Vaz said.

In a statement to Parliament last Tuesday, Vaz had stated his displeasure that the light and power company had missed the original estimate given to Cabinet for restoration; missed deadlines published for parish-by-parish restoration; and has not fully restored service to areas which they indicated are restored.

Additionally, Vaz said that “based on the missed deadlines, the projected date for full restoration keeps moving further and further away”.

In fact, Vaz told the Observer that he is of the belief that given this trajectory, JPS will not meet the deadline for full power restoration.