‘One year now, still in darkness’

WESTERN BUREAU:

St James councillors are calling for the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) to be held accountable for the failing to repair or replace several streetlights that were damaged during the passage of Hurricane Melissa a year ago.

Speaking during last week’s St James Municipal Corporation (StJMC) meeting, Montego Bay Mayor Richard Vernon urged councillors whose divisions lost streetlights during the hurricane to collect the relevant information for a unified application to have them replaced.

“The JPS should be taking the direction on these things directly from the council, because we have to deal with these things on a daily basis,” said Vernon. “I am going to ask all councillors to identify all the posts across the divisions, whether they were impacted by Melissa or if they were not but are without a light, to retrieve the relevant forms to fill out from the corporation’s chief executive officer’s office, and then we will make a collective request for street lights for St James.”

He said the request would be sent to the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development for them to have dialogue with the JPS “because I believe JPS is culpable in the restoration process”.

The mayor was responding to a complaint from Martin Kellier, councillor for the Welcome Hall Division, that roughly 200 streetlights in his division were destroyed during the Category 5 hurricane, and are yet to be replaced.

“I have gotten reports up to last night that all of Welcome Hall is in total darkness, and this is one year now, and the area is still in darkness. The schools especially are in darkness, and the complaints are mounting every day about streetlights,” Kellier said last Thursday. “Why are we paying the JPS for all of these lights that are down? It is one year now since Melissa, and we have been paying for lights that are not working ... .”

Meanwhile, Kerry Thomas, councillor for the Mount Salem division, noted that the presence of streetlights is a matter of community safety that cannot be ignored, pointing to a $24-billion loan the Government approved for the JPS to accelerate the restoration of the power grid post-Melissa.

“ ... We should not have to come here for a safety and security function such as streetlights in our communities and be bawling for lights here and there. JPS has a responsibility to go out there and ensure that all the communities are properly lit and that lights are placed where they should be,” said Thomas.

In March this year, Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie announced that the JPS would resume its streetlight installation and repair programme, which was disrupted by the passage of Hurricane Melissa.

During his 2025-26 Sectoral Debate presentation, McKenzie had announced that an additional 22,800 streetlights would be installed across the country over the next two years, and that each of Jamaica’s 228 municipal divisions would receive 50 new streetlights annually.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com