BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE St. Kitts Electricity Company Limited (SKELEC) is claiming that a faulty line at the Bayfords Feeder was the cause for the islandwide power outage on Friday (Dec. 10), which adversely affected a planned public meeting by Team Unity.
Speaking with SKNVibes, SKELEC’s Public Relations Officer Gawain Fraites explained the cause of the power outage.
“It was a fault that we had on the outside and this is just what you would call a line fault. So we had a fault on the outside and the power plant went out at 7:13 p.m. and we started restoring power at 7:47 p.m.”
When asked if there was a subsequent power outage following the restoration of power, Fraites said that not all areas were restored at the same time, adding that only the St Peter’s area was affected.
“We had certain areas that didn’t come on because when we restore we do not restore all areas at one time. So certain areas did not come on, but they came on later and the last one was put on at 8:50 p.m.”
However, Team Unity and its supporters are crying foul over the incident that caused their open-air meeting to be cancelled, which was scheduled to occur just after its Protest March on Friday evening.
In a release, Leader of Team Unity Dr. Timothy Harris was quoted as saying that “many are perceiving to be a very suspicious power outage and I wouldn't put it pass the dictator after seeing the strength of Unity that the dictator shut down the country".
He further said: “Dr. Douglas and his oppressive regime may turn off the lights on the people of St.Kitts-Nevis but he can't turn off the hopes and dreams of the people of this Federation. He can never turn off the will to be free from intimidation and dictatorship. He will never turn off the people’s resolve.”
Further commenting on the Friday evening’s power outage, Dr. Harris compared it with an outage that occurred on the following day.
“I don’t know the reason behind those but, yes, they had nothing to do with what happened before. Those where different stuff. Power went on Saturday and it would have been all the way from Conaree to Saddlers because a tree fell on the line in Saddlers and it killed power from that area. And it was from Cayon all the way down to Newton Ground. Only half of Newton Ground was on. That was a tree fell on a line; one of our lines, our main line and it killed the whole feeder and it was restored in about an hour and a half,” he noted
Fraites declared that SKELEC would soon begin undertaking maintenance work “probably next week”.
