Lights out again: Paulwell demands accountability after islandwide power failure

At 9:02 PM on Friday June 5, 2026, Jamaica was plunged into total darkness. Every parish. Every household. Every business. The government, specifically the Prime Minister, must come clean and clear on cause of the system failure, responsible for the islandwide blackout. 

He also needs to tell the people of Jamaica when they can expect full restoration and stability in power supply, instead of the vague promise of patience and  still no full restoration after 14 hours. This is not the first time Jamaica is going through this national trauma, as there was a similar islandwide outage in August 2016. A formal probe was ordered and recommendations were submitted to the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR). 

At that time, the Prime Minister committed to the country in a nationwide address that the government would ensure such an occurrence would never happen again. Ten years on, one urgent question remains unanswered: were those recommendations ever implemented?

“Jamaicans cannot be asked to simply endure darkness and move on,” said MP Phillip Paulwell, Opposition Spokesperson on Energy. “The OUR must account for what was done with the 2016 recommendations. If they were implemented, why are we here again? If they were not, who is responsible for that failure of oversight?”

Paulwell is calling on the OUR to issue an urgent public report detailing what actions were taken following the 2016 probe, and on JPS to publish a full, transparent account of Friday night’s failure. Was lightning truly the initial cause, as suggested? Could it have been a cyber attack? When will that determination be made public? If the claim is that we are building back with resilience this is a complete contradiction. 

The economic and social cost of islandwide blackouts falls hardest on ordinary Jamaicans, businesses losing revenue, households losing food, airports in chaos and hospitals straining under emergency conditions.

“This cannot become a cycle of failure, probe, silence, and repeat,” Paulwell added. “Accountability is not optional. It is owed.”