Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ac­knowl­edged some cus­tomers ex­pe­ri­enced dis­rup­tions in their elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply on Mon­day.

How­ev­er, he said it was re­solved around mid­day.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Gon­za­les said there was a chal­lenge with one of the in­de­pen­dent pow­er pro­duc­ers that re­sult­ed in T&TEC hav­ing to do some load shed­ding.

On Mon­day, Princes Town MP, Bar­ry Padarath not­ed that every year thou­sands in the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty suf­fer from dry taps and pow­er out­ages for Di­vali as he called on Min­is­ter Gon­za­les, to in­ter­vene in such in­ci­dents on an aus­pi­cious day.

In a re­lease, Padarath said many parts of south and cen­tral Trinidad were with­out wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty. He said with it be­ing Di­vali day, cre­at­ed an un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion for the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty.

“Padarath said that it was cu­ri­ous that al­most every year for Di­vali, the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty faces this chal­lenge and called on the Min­is­ter to im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vide as­sis­tance in hav­ing this sit­u­a­tion re­solved. He fur­ther added that with­out there be­ing pri­or no­tices of the dis­rup­tion in pub­lic util­i­ties, many cit­i­zens were un­pre­pared for what is hap­pen­ing to­day,” the re­lease said.

Ac­cord­ing to Padarath’s re­lease, the con­stituen­cies af­fect­ed by a lack of wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty in­clude Pointe a Pierre, Princes Town, Na­pari­ma, Oropouche East, Oropouche West, Sipaira, Fyz­abad, St. Au­gus­tine, Ch­agua­nas West, Cou­va North, Cou­va South, Ca­roni Cen­tral and Ca­roni East.

“The Princes Town MP said Di­vali is meant to be a joy­ous oc­ca­sion but this morn­ing with dry taps and no elec­tric­i­ty, many cit­i­zens, in par­tic­u­lar the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty, were in de­spair and frus­tra­tion. He added that this comes against the back­drop of gen­er­a­tions of ge­o­graph­i­cal ne­glect and oth­er types of dis­crim­i­na­tion,” the re­lease said.

Gon­za­les dis­put­ed Padarath’s claim there was dis­crim­i­na­tion at play and con­demned his use of the re­li­gious hol­i­day to push such an as­ser­tion.

“As Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties I have a more panoram­ic view of dis­rup­tions on the wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty grid on a dai­ly ba­sis and I can tell you, this has noth­ing to do with Di­vali or cit­i­zens in south Trinidad. Parts of my con­stituen­cy al­so suf­fered some dis­rup­tions ear­li­er to­day. My con­stituen­cy is not south-based. So it is un­for­tu­nate that the good­ly MP will use such a holy day like to­day to in­sin­u­ate and spread di­vi­sive mes­sages,” he said.

“He should per­haps take a note from some of his col­leagues on his bench who adopt a dif­fer­ent ap­proach of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and col­lab­o­ra­tion to solve the prob­lems of all our peo­ple with some lev­el of deco­rum and dig­ni­ty. I sin­cere­ly pray that the lights of Di­vali will il­lu­mi­nate and dis­pel the dark­ness of mis­chief in his heart. I take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­mend the hard work­ing men and women of T&TEC and WASA for their ded­i­ca­tion and hard work es­pe­cial­ly over the last week to en­sure that our cit­i­zens are pro­vid­ed with wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty de­spite the chal­lenges,” Gon­za­les added.

TTEC said in a state­ment:

“Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent of T&TEC’s cus­tomers in Trinidad ex­pe­ri­enced an in­ter­rup­tion in their elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply last­ing be­tween three min­utes to one hour.

The elec­tric­i­ty grid has re­mained sta­ble since that time and cus­tomers have ex­pe­ri­enced no ad­di­tion­al prob­lems.

At ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7.40 am a prob­lem with ma­chines at one of the com­mis­sion’s

In­de­pen­dent Pow­er Pro­duc­ers (IPP) caused the sys­tem to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly shed cus­tomers at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions across the is­land, in­clud­ing Trinci­ty, Siparia, Preysal, Morne Co­co Rd, Rousil­lac, Curepe, Man­zanil­la, Biche, Aranguez, En­ter­prise, Palmiste, Las Lo­mas, Debe, Diego Mar­tin, Val­sayn, Arou­ca, Bon Air, Ari­ma, Mar­aval, Sea Lots, Cu­napo and Guaico.

T&TEC then in­struct­ed the oth­er IPPs to im­me­di­ate­ly in­crease out­put to their full avail­able ca­pac­i­ty and to make stand­by gen­er­a­tion avail­able.

Restora­tion to cus­tomers com­menced at 7.43 am.

At 8.11am, sup­ply had been re­stored to more than half of all af­fect­ed cus­tomers and at 8.37am the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply to all af­fect­ed cus­tomers was nor­malised.

This in­ci­dent was un­fore­seen and the com­mis­sion and its IPPs re­spond­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to en­sure min­i­mal dis­rup­tion to cus­tomers.