The Trnidad and Tobago Electricity Commission is now in the process of setting up a committee to investigate what led to the nationwide blackout in Tobago on Friday.
The island-wide power outage occurred at about 5:30 pm.
Speaking with Guardian Media, Corporate Communication Manager at T&TEC Annabelle Brasnell said electricity has been restored.
“Our first priority was to put customers back on supply last night (Friday) which we did successfully within a few hours.
She explained that the problem originated at Cove (Cove Eco-Industrial and Business Park) when the alarm went off and the machines went down. The cause of that, however, is not known.
She said this was why the utility has initiated a probe.
“We did say that a committee would be constituted to investigate the cause of the alarm going off and the machines going down right after the alarm. That committee has not been fully constituted as yet but as soon as I have the information about that I would be able to share it.”
Meanwhile, President of the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association Chris James said the outage negatively affected tourists on the island. He said in some cases it lasted as long as three hours.
“As you can imagine, guests in the hotels do not expect to suffer,” he added.
He said they thought that the issues at Cove were already solved but in the past six months there have been numerous outages.
“I think there should be a report into what happened at Cove. We need to understand where we stand with Cove to get to the bottom of these outages.
He said “it’s a bit of a kick in the backside” to have this happen now after Tropical Storm Karen has already passed and the island has settled.
