Over 100 electrical linesmen from Canada arrive to help Jamaica with power restoration

A team of 117 elec­tri­cal lines­men from Cana­da ar­rived in Ja­maica on Wednes­day, to as­sist the light and pow­er com­pa­ny—the Ja­maica Pub­lic Ser­vice (JPS)—to re­store elec­tric­i­ty in sec­tions of the is­land that were bat­tered by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

It is the third ar­rival of over­seas util­i­ty work­ers with­in two days, push­ing the to­tal num­ber of for­eign lines­men de­ployed so far to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 228, sur­pass­ing the ini­tial pro­jec­tion of 200 un­der a planned 300-per­son mo­bil­i­sa­tion.

The Cana­di­an crew will be de­ployed pri­mar­i­ly across west­ern Ja­maica to the parish­es of St Eliz­a­beth, West­more­land and St James, where JPS says the dam­age has been so se­vere that many ar­eas now re­quire re­design and re­build­ing of elec­tric­i­ty net­works, rather than sim­ple restora­tion.

Speak­ing at the Sang­ster In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in the west­ern city of Mon­tego Bay, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Daryl Vaz said the rapid mo­bil­i­sa­tion un­der­scores strong col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica and JPS.

“JPS is liv­ing up to their com­mit­ment based on the arrange­ment and un­der­stand­ing we have with the funds that we have pro­vid­ed. I’m a bit dis­ap­point­ed, but un­der­stand­ing that dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son, the lo­gis­tics of co­or­di­nat­ing and get­ting every­thing done still has been done in record time, we on­ly got cab­i­net ap­proval two months ago, and JPS on­ly got their ap­proval from their board last week,” Min­is­ter Vaz said.

“So, to be in this po­si­tion tonight is huge, and it is a com­mit­ment of us be­ing able to give the peo­ple light, some by Christ­mas, some by New Year, and the ma­jor­i­ty by mid­dle of Jan­u­ary to end of Jan­u­ary. That’s a com­mit­ment, and we’re work­ing close­ly,” he added.

The Gov­ern­ment has loaned JPS US$150 mil­lion to help speed up restora­tion. The loan is ex­pect­ed to be re­paid over five years.

JPS Pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Hugh Grant re­it­er­at­ed that 84 per cent of their cus­tomers have al­ready been re­stored, cred­it­ing 24-hour op­er­a­tions and struc­tured re­cov­ery plans.

He not­ed that while the Cana­di­an crews ar­rived with­out spe­cialised ve­hi­cles, they came ful­ly equipped with tools and will be­gin work im­me­di­ate­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly in hard-to-ac­cess ar­eas.

“These par­tic­u­lar re­sources will be fo­cused on restora­tion in the west­ern parish­es, and in par­tic­u­lar they’ll be fo­cus­ing ar­eas such as West­more­land, Saint Eliz­a­beth, Hanover and Saint James, to ac­cel­er­ate the restora­tion ef­forts there,” Grant said.

Spe­cialised equip­ment, in­clud­ing buck­et trucks, is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive on two barges on De­cem­ber 24 and 25, car­ry­ing more than 200 pieces of equip­ment, which will fur­ther ac­cel­er­ate restora­tion ef­forts. —KINGSTON, Ja­maica (CMC)