UNACCEPTABLE – Wheatley fuming at latest islandwide power outage

Minister of Science, Energy and Technology Dr. Hon. Andrew Wheatley is thoroughly displeased with the latest occurrence of an islandwide power outage. On Saturday August 27, 2016 the entire island was subjected to a total blackout due to what can be described as a procedural error.

Minister Wheatley said: “Let me categorically state that I am not at all happy with this latest incident and I find the inconvenience to the people of Jamaica and the many businesses affected totally unacceptable”

Minister Wheatley went on to further state that: “Islandwide power outages of this nature should not occur as there ought to be processes, procedures and adequate redundancies in the grid to mitigate such a cascading set of events that would result in a catastrophic failure of this kind.”
Minister Wheatley has been informed by the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) that it is currently working to resolve the issue in keeping with its commitment to its customers. A phased restoration process has begun and it is expected that power will be restored to all customers in a matter of hours.

Dr Wheatley added: “I have been in contact with the Jamaica Public Service Officials and I have requested a preliminary report to be submitted to my office by Monday August 29, 2016 with a final report to follow on Thursday September 1, 2016”

He is encouraging Jamaicans to be safe while the JPS returns power to the island and that he has been assured that the island will be back online withing another few hours.

Commentary

We seem to be going backward instead of forward as it relates to power outages. This outage was Nationwide and lasted for about 4+ hours. This is shameful, unacceptable and not what we should be accepting in 2016 from JPS.

There is no event at the power company that should shut the entire system down nationwide.

This can only be repeatedly happening in a third World country. This has happened too many times before. Something needs to be done. … there needs to be harsh penalties …. leadership lacks vision.

Commentary by Hopeton O’Connor-Dennie, Senior International Correspondent & photojournalist for Vision Newspaper Canada.