BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – MANY residents in St. Peter’s were deprived of electricity until yesterday afternoon (Mar. 28), which, according to the St. Kitts Electrical Company (SKELEC), originated from problems with the electrical feeders in the Bayford and Monkey Hill areas on the previous day.
In an interview with SKNVibes, Public Relations Officer of SKELEC, Gawain Fraites explained that they discovered several faults in the feeders on Thursday afternoon after they had began works to rectify the power outage.
Fraites informed that it was not until after power was resumed they had found several other faults along the Bayford and Monkey Hill feeders.
“What happened at about 2:30 yesterday (Thursday), we had a fault at the Bayford feeder which would cover from Taylors all the way up to the Bay Front. When we came out and fix that fault and put on back the power, we realised that there were several faults. But these faults were further up, which would be in the Lower Monkey Hill area.”
He noted that because of the nature of the fault and ongoing repair works, power was not resumed in all the affected areas in St. Peter’s on Thursday evening, last evening because of the nature of the fault on that feeder because it would have caused a reoccurrence of earlier but repair works are ongoing in those areas.
“So what we are doing now is repairing area by area, section by section and we realised that there were several faults along the Monkey Hill feeder. So there were areas we had to leave out last night, otherwise if we had put them back on they would have caused continuous faults today in the area. If we had put it on back we maybe would have had faults in Lower Monkey Hill, New Road, Shadwell Estate and Stapleton. And those places are without power and we are restoring each area section by section.”
He declared that power would have been restored to those affected areas at around 2:00 p.m. or 3:00 p.m. yesterday.
At the time of the interview, Fraites was unable to give this agency details of the faults that led to the power outage, but he stressed that there would not be a reoccurrence of what occurred on Thursday.
He however declared that the cause of several power outages in the recent past was attributed to fire which would have affected utility poles in those areas.
