Energy Expert to Assess Findings and Reports Submitted By JPS

The Ministry of Energy, Transport and Telecommunications will be engaging a world-renowned energy expert to assess the findings and reports submitted by the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) Company in relation to the all-island outage experienced on June 5.

The expert will also assess the recommendations made by the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR).

This was disclosed by Portfolio Minister, Hon. Daryl Vaz, in a statement to Parliament on Wednesday (June 10).

“As Minister, I remain committed to ensuring that the lessons from this incident are fully understood, that all the recommendations are rigorously pursued and that every stakeholder fulfils their responsibility to strengthen the national grid,” Minister Vaz said.

He noted that the objective is not just to simply recover from the outage but to emerge with a stronger, more resilient electricity system and ensuring that the JPS is held accountable and that there are no further recurrences.

“Between 2006 and 2012, we had four occurrences of this nature compared to one in the last decade. Whilst the frequency has decreased, the greater problem must be addressed,” the Minister maintained.

He said that the events of the past several days have been deeply concerning and have disrupted many lives.

“The impact of this event did not end with the restoration of the grid. Many customers have continued to report power interruptions and localised outages, raising further concerns about the stability and resilience of the electricity network,” Mr. Vaz pointed out.

The Minister said the preliminary report submitted by the JPS has outlined the sequence of events, the operational response, the suggested cause of the wider system instability and recommendations for corrective action.

“What is clear is that this event has exposed weaknesses that cannot be ignored. Jamaica expects and deserves a reliable electricity system, and they expect accountability when failures occur and decisive action to prevent them from happening again,” he argued.

Mr. Vaz assured that the matter continues to receive his full attention and that the public will be kept informed as additional information becomes available and further assessments are completed.