SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les says the re­port in­to the Feb­ru­ary 16 is­land­wide black­out will not lead to any puni­tive ac­tion be­ing tak­en against any­one.

Speak­ing to the me­dia on Thurs­day at the min­istry’s head of­fice in Port-of-Spain, Gon­za­les con­firmed he too had got­ten a copy of the re­port, sub­mit­ted by the in­de­pen­dent ex­pert com­mit­tee of Chan­drab­han Shar­ma, Kei­th Sir­ju and Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on Tues­day.

The com­mit­tee pre­sent­ed the re­port to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“I did re­ceive a copy of the re­port, the Prime Min­is­ter pro­vid­ed me with a copy when he was for­mal­ly hand­ed a copy and he asked me to ur­gent­ly read it and since I re­ceived it the day be­fore, it is this morn­ing I con­clud­ed read­ing the re­port,” Gon­za­les said.

The black­out saw Trinidad los­ing elec­tric­i­ty for over 10 hours on Feb­ru­ary 16. At the time, Gon­za­les said there was an is­sue em­a­nat­ing from the in­de­pen­dent pro­duc­ers which im­pact­ed T&TEC’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide elec­tric­i­ty to the coun­try.

On Feb­ru­ary 18, Gon­za­les made a state­ment in Par­lia­ment about the black­out, say­ing, “A short-cir­cuit fault oc­curred on a 12,000-volt over­head line. The line cross­es un­der the two 220,000-volt trans­mis­sion over­head lines which con­nect the T&TEC sys­tem to the Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) pow­er sta­tion in La Brea.”

Yes­ter­day, he said there was noth­ing in the re­port which sur­prised him.

“From the on­set, we have been very straight­for­ward with the coun­try with re­spect to the in­for­ma­tion that was avail­able to us, with re­spect to the cause of the black­out and I am hap­py to say that noth­ing in that re­port sug­gests that we were fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong in that re­port that we put for­ward to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty on the cause of the black­out,” Gon­za­les said.

And al­though he read the re­port, Gon­za­les said he would not be able to re­veal its de­tails with­out the go-ahead of the Prime Min­is­ter.

“There is a lot to learn from this, we will await the in­struc­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter and the de­ci­sion of the Cab­i­net in how we in­tend to move for­ward. It is not a re­port that is go­ing to gath­er dust on shelves, there are some no­table rec­om­men­da­tions and we in­tend to act on those rec­om­men­da­tions to pro­tect the na­tion­al in­ter­est.”

Asked whether the claims made by Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get that a fall­en tree had trig­gered the black­out were true, Gon­za­les said the coun­try needs to recog­nise who were the “noise­mak­ers” in so­ci­ety.

“I am say­ing that it is un­for­tu­nate that he made the state­ment know­ing that a com­mit­tee was put in place to in­ves­ti­gate the cause of the black­out and the com­mit­tee’s work was on­go­ing and that we should be re­spon­si­ble to al­low the work of the com­mit­tee to be com­plet­ed be­fore mak­ing any pro­nounce­ments on the work of that com­mit­tee and I just found it was a bit un­for­tu­nate but then again, what do you ex­pect from peo­ple like that?” he asked.

Gon­za­les said the re­port would be laid be­fore Cab­i­net yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, as he promised its rec­om­men­da­tions would not be ig­nored.

“There is a lot to learn from this, we will await the in­struc­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter and the de­ci­sion of the Cab­i­net in how we in­tend to move for­ward, it is not a re­port that is go­ing to gath­er dust on shelves, there are some no­table rec­om­men­da­tions and we in­tend to act on those rec­om­men­da­tions to pro­tect the na­tion­al in­ter­est.”

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