JPS restores power to customers affected by Tropical Storm Rafael
KINGSTON, Jamaica— Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) said it has completed restoration of power to customers who were impacted by outages caused by Tropical Storm Rafael.
The storm passed over Jamaica on Tuesday, causing flooding, landslides and power outages in sections of the island.
READ: Weather system now a tropical depression as Jamaica prepares for impact
JPS President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Hugh Grant, announced that all parishes were fully restored as at 3:00pm on Saturday with only one business customer in Port Esquivel, St Catherine, still without service due to access challenges caused by swampy terrain.
The company said it is working to relocate the line supplying this facility in order to restore service to the customer soon.
“I am very happy that we were able to restore our customers ahead of the tight timeline we set for ourselves, and without any safety incident,” the JPS CEO said.
“I am particularly encouraged by the improvements in our stakeholder engagement and outreach during this restoration process. We were able to work closely with the Ministry of Energy, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), various municipalities, Members of Parliament and other community representatives, who were able to share information to help us execute our restoration strategy safely and quickly. I really want to thank our customers for their patience over these past few days, as we are very mindful of the inconvenience caused by loss of power,” Grant said.
He advised that the power company has deactivated its Incident Command centre, and returned to normal operations.
“Under our regular operations, we will continue to respond to customer reports and outages unrelated to Tropical Storm Rafael. We continue to build on the lessons learnt during major weather events, and our teams stand ready to serve our customers even better than before,” Grant said.
JPS went on to issue a reminder to customers to make safety a priority at all times. However, issues can be reported to JPS using the MyJPS Mobile App, its social media channels @myjpsonline or by calling 888-225-5577 / 888-CALL JPS.
