Almost 60 days after the passage of Hurricane Beryl, residents in all sections of hard-hit St Elizabeth have now been restored with electricity.

Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) President and CEO Hugh Grant announced the service restoration on Thursday, a day after the completion of the work, pointing out that it was achieved ahead of the scheduled completion date of August 31.

“JPS has now completed power restoration in the parish of St Elizabeth, three days ahead of schedule and right in time for back-to-school, one of the biggest events in the lives of our young people and their families,” Grant said at a back-to-school fair hosted by JPS in Ginger Hill, St Elizabeth.

He noted, however, that while power has been restored to all communities in the parish, there are some customers who may still have issues on their properties preventing them from receiving electricity supply.

“We are working with those customers to have those issues resolved so we can get them the power, because the power is in the communities. A few others may also be out due to access issues and we are working with the relevant authorities to have that also resolved,” he said.

Grant said that the completion of restoration in St Elizabeth brings JPS’s islandwide power restoration after Hurricane Beryl to a conclusion.

“That is good news,” he said.

He thanked Jamaicans for their patience in allowing JPS teams time to restore the system, noting that sections of the network have been completely rebuilt and rebuilding will continue in the ensuing weeks on a planned basis.

Grant also extended special thanks to Energy Minister Daryl Vaz for “his feedback, his input, and his advocacy for the Jamaican people”.

“It’s obvious he cares about the people, and the good thing is JPS also cares about people who are our customers. So we’re very much aligned on that front. I look forward to the growing relationships of our various stakeholders from strength to strength,” he said.

Vaz, in response to the announcement, said he was “very elated”.

“It has been, in fact, a very painful eight weeks for me as minister and all the hundreds of thousands of suffering customers,” he said in an audio release.

“But [this is] a great achievement and I give credit to the president on his proactive approach since he took office on August 1st that he has been able to lead from the front and get this painful matter behind us,” Vaz said.

He also said he was looking forward to the outstanding isolated areas, customers and communities that are still having issues to be fully resolved over the next few days, “so that we can in fact have full restoration”.

“Also of importance to me is the remaining schools that were damaged that need to be reconnected for back-to-school, National Water Commission pumps that are still out and, of course, the National Irrigation Commission wells that serve the farmers,” he said,

Vaz had previously been critical of JPS’s slow pace of restoration islandwide and was scathing in pointing out that JPS had missed every restoration deadline. The minister had said he was not confident JPS would meet the August 31 deadline for St Elizabeth.

The Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) had also expressed doubts.

In a media release last Sunday, the light and power company said it was “on the verge of completing the power restoration of customers in St Elizabeth as the August 31 deadline approaches”.

But last Friday, during a Jamaica Observer Press Club, the OUR’s Manager for Engineering and Technical Analysis Courtney Francis said that, based on the agency’s observations, meeting the deadline would be “a challenge”.

The speculation as to whether JPS would have achieved the deadline was mainly due to the fact that the company had indicated that it was not just repairing systems in St Elizabeth, but rebuilding them, which takes time.

“The company has been working to rebuild sections of the St Elizabeth network and has moved manpower from across the island to escalate the rate of repairs in the parish. Following full restoration of customers, JPS will continue works in the parish to redesign, upgrade and rebuild sections of the distribution network,” the JPS said in its release on Sunday.