 |
| Director of Government Press & Public Relations, Mr. Charles Bussue (left) interviewing Acting General Manger, NEVLEC Mr. Cartwright Farrell |
Charlestown Nevis (March 5, 2004) Acting General Manager of the Nevis Electricity Company (NEVLEC), Mr. Cartwright Farrell apologized to the Nevisian public for the frequent disruption of the electricity supply to the island.
He remarked: “First, I have to apologise to the customers who have been experiencing these outages. It is not something we would like to see if, is something we have been working very hard on.”
Farrell, who, during an exclusive interview with Director of Government Press & Public Relations, Mr. Charles Bussue, on the local television Channel 8 programme, “Up Close” added, “I think probably, one of the problems is that we were paying so much attention to the projects that we probably neglected to do some of the preventative maintenance on some of the older areas.”
In assuring the host on the evening of Wednesday 8, that the company was not returning to the good old days when electricity used to leave the consumers so frequently, Mr. Farrell noted that the company would not allow that situation to re-occur. “It has to be stopped and we will stop it,” intimated Farrell.
“We are experiencing some problems over in the Gingerland circuit,” he said, as he cleared the air regarding the frequent outages in the Gingerland area. “Of late, we’ve been having some very, very high winds, some heavy rains and we have some old pieces of equipment on the system, and with more load, the system tends to show up the little faults that are existing.”
Farrell pointed out that the company has been looking for an earth fault that was very difficult to find. He compared it to the fact that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. He also noted that the Gingerland circuit stretches across a range, from the Prospect Power Plant to Liburd Hill in Camps via Gingerland branching out into different areas.
“We have to go by everyone of these to find what is going on. It is like looking for a needle in a twenty-mile haystack and its very difficult,” explained Farrell. “What we need to do is try to get rid of the old pieces. We are finding that we still have some of the old stuff on the system and we are going on a drive to clean those out.”
According to the manager, although the company would embark upon a clean up campaign, it would not happen over night and it is going to be very costly, assuring the host that the company will arrest the outages.
