Electricity restored to 300,000 customers

The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) is reporting that electricity has been restored for approximately 300,000 customers, representing 64 per cent of its service base across the island, in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa.

President and CEO Hugh Grant provided the update during a press conference at Jamaica House on Tuesday. Category 5 Melissa made landfall on October 28, unleashing catastrophic damage across multiple sectors of national infrastructure and community life. Grant reported that electricity has already been restored for more than 95 per cent of customers in St Thomas, Kingston, St Andrew, and St Catherine.

"Right now, we're working on the unique challenges of various customers to facilitate restoration. The good news is, there is no widespread community in these areas that are currently impacted," he said.

Grant added that steady progress is under way in Clarendon, Manchester, Portland, St Mary, and St Ann, with the restoration of critical services, including hospitals, water pumps, town centres, and key economic zones, including the St Ann's Bay Hospital, Ocho Rios Pier, Dunn's River, and Ocho Rios. He added that given the scale of devastation in the western parishes, "this is much more than repair and restore - it is a redesign and rebuild of our facilities".

"We have seen whereby landslides have caused poles and other infrastructure to be significantly damaged and, frankly, we have to now reroute some of our facilities and redesign to facilitate restoration. The good news is we're making progress. Our strategy is to first restore critical services like hospitals and water pumps and town centres in these key economic zones," he said.

The CEO indicated that power is expected to be restored in Trelawny within the week, and in Hanover and Westmoreland over the next two weeks. Regarding St Elizabeth, Grant advised that power has been restored to Junction, Southfield, and several surrounding communities.

"We did this by doing some creative things on the distribution system to facilitate St Elizabeth being supplied from Manchester. There is, however, a limitation to that as we have built out in St Elizabeth to a stage now whereby, to go further, we would need the critical high-voltage transmission to be restored. That has been significantly damaged... however, we continue to work," he said.