BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – MINISTER of Public Works, Energy and Public Utilities, Dr. the Hon. Asim Martim said that the power outages experienced over the past six weeks in St. Kitts resulted from human errors.
The Minister, who at the time was in attendance at the Prime Minister’s Monthly Press Conference on Wednesday (Apr. 13), was responding to a question from the media on the issue of power outages.
“The outages that we have seen over the last month or month and half, have basically been outages caused by human error,” he said.
Citing three incidents where power was lost, Martin explained that sometimes it is a simple blunder and not necessarily problems with the generators.
“These are sometimes not factors that are actually on the generators or problems with the generators, but problems that are caused sometimes by human error and problems out in the field.”
He declared that the government is in the process of commissioning two additional generators that would assist in maintenance work, but reassured that the Needsmust Power Station has sufficient capacity to sustain the island.
“At this moment, we are in the process of commissioning two other new generators and that should be completed by the end of May this year. But besides that, we do have capacity at the Power Station to suffice the whole nation. The additional two generators, at a capacity of eight mega watts (four each) will be able to assist us in doing additional maintenance during the course of this year.”
Addressing the issue of corporatisation of the Electricity Department, Minister Martin explained that the power station was built around 1952 and the department has been functioning since that time. He said the Electricity Department has since grown beyond that time and that is the reason why the government has taken the decision to corporatise.
Martin also explained that the recently passed Bill would provide more independence.
“The bill that we passed a couple of weeks ago in Parliament will provide the new company with more autonomy in terms of how it functions...in terms of being able to do things in a much quicker way and function in a more commercial sense,” he said.
He said too that “we have to move beyond and look at it in terms of operating it in a more commercial-oriented structure; in terms of all the things we will have to do. Go through the Department of Human Resources to get additional workers and to go through the Ministry of Finance, [instead] they will have their own Board of Directors, their own manager and be able to function in a much more effective and efficient way. So I think the privatization will help us along that way in providing a more reliable service.”
