JPS: Electricity restored to more than 30,000 customers impacted by outages

The Jamaica Public Service (JPS) says electricity has been restored to more than 30,000 customers who lost power due to the adverse weather associated with Hurricane Melissa.

Over the last 24 hours, just over 52,000 or about 7.5% of 700,000 JPS customers, were impacted by outages, JPS said in a media release on Monday night.

The light and power company said work remains under way to bring back power to affected customers.

However, it said, in some cases, restoration is being hampered by access challenges caused by difficult terrain and heavy rains, noting that there has been an increase in outages across the island as a result of deteriorating weather conditions influenced by the pending arrival of the Category 5 hurricane.

“Our teams are working to restore supply to as many of the affected customers as possible. JPS employees and local contractors are being supported by the overseas line workers who have already been deployed to several parishes. We understand the inconvenience of losing power, but while we make every effort to keep the lights on, we are seeing an increasing number of outages caused by persons cutting trees inappropriately and causing them to fall on power lines,” explained JPS President and CEO Hugh Grant.

He continued: “As the hurricane approaches, our priority is to keep the lights on for as long as it is safe to do so. But we need members of the public to do their part and stay away from power lines. Just this afternoon, we got the sad news of an electrocution when a billboard being removed made contact with a power line. This is a sad and unnecessary tragedy.”

The JPS boss cautioned that with weather conditions worsening, at some point, the company will no longer be able to respond to individual customer reports.

“We will not compromise the safety of our teams, but we give you our commitment that we will be back in the field carrying out restoration work as soon as it is safe to do so.”

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