By Cherisse Sutton
Reporter SKNVibes.com
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| Minister of Public Utilities, Works, Transport and Postal Services, Earl Asim Martin |
(Basseterre; St. Kitts): Minister of Public Utilities, Works, Transport and Postal Services, Earl Asim Martin announced in a press release that an explosion was the cause of the delay in the electricity restoration.
On Wednesday, June 6, a press release was issued by the electricity department to inform the general public that the electricity supply would be interrupted from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday, June 7.
The disruption in supply was to facilitate the works related to the installation of a new set of switch gears, which had to be undertaken at that time.
However, the electricity which was scheduled to be restored at 4 p.m. was not restored until after 9 and 10 p.m. in the different areas of St. Kitts.
"To carryout this commissioning, the old switch gears, which still carry much of the operations, had to be turned off; while turning off these switch gears an explosion occurred, this disabled the entire system countrywide," Minister Martin said. "This meant that the problem was now compounded and the men were now faced with the onerous task of identifying the area of fault, which caused the explosion."
He said that several tasks were carried out after the explosion but the fault was not found until late in the evening.~~Adz:Right~~
"These switchgears carry what is called a Bus Bar, which must be activated in order to energise the lines that take electricity to our homes and businesses," he said.
Martin further stated in the release that the Ministry has continued to make huge investments in the energy sector having purchased a new generator to deal with increased demands, but now we must focus on the purchase of switch gears and relays that would further upgrade the Power Station, and solve the problem totally that occurred yesterday.
Martin also commended the hardworking and dedicated staff who worked untiringly from dawn until after midnight without pausing even once to satisfy their hunger or to quench their thirst.
He also took the opportunity to send sincere apologies on behalf of the Government and his Ministry for whatever inconvenience that may have occurred during these recent outages and wishes to assure that the Ministry will continue with its tasks to upgrade the generation and transmission of electricity as it seeks to improve the quality of service to our customers.
