PM announces roving generators for communities still without water

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has announced an initiative aimed at providing potable water to communities without electricity in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl.

Addressing the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Prime Minister Holness said he has instructed the National Water Commission (NWC) to rent every available and appropriate generator to give support to communities where water has not yet been restored.

The Prime Minister informed that some generators have already been rented and will be deployed starting Wednesday.

“We will be mounting these [roving] generators on flatbed trucks, so that they can move between communities to allow for a temporary reprieve while storage tanks, both for households and communities are refilled,” he told the House.

“We are targeting approximately 50 of these mobile generators to work in parallel with the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) efforts…The plan is to move around the country, electrify these pumps, announce the period of time when these communities will have water…and we will move around until JPS has returned electricity to the communities,” he explained further.

The roving generators are in addition to machines that have been placed at pumps serving hospitals, other medical facilities and Infirmaries.

NWC indicates that regular water supply has been reinstated for 85 per cent of its 546,000 customers, representing 464,000 clients.

 Holness informed that the 15 per cent of customers still without regular supply are served by just under 50 per cent or over 300 of the NWC's pumps.

He said that 13 major towns have water supply, and facilities in Black River have been partially restored.

Overall, 78 critical systems are still dependent on and are awaiting JPS restoration of electricity.

“The Government is clear that those citizens without access to potable water are currently in a difficult situation. The NWC is working closely with the JPS to have these systems energised to alleviate the struggle that those customers are experiencing,” Holness said.

He further noted that he has given instruction to Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Senator the Hon. Matthew Samuda, to pursue an aggressive resilience plan for the NWC, to ensure that all major systems serving population centres have redundancy through the purchase of generators.

He said that the first phase of this undertaking will cost approximately $750 million.

“As we try to build… resilience in our public utilities, the Government has taken the decision that critical pumping stations for the NWC must have their own backup supply and the first assessment towards this is that the Government will have to spend $750 million to acquire these backup generators.

“We will continue to do this exercise until the entire NWC system has its backup capacity and capability to continue the distribution and production of water even if the main electrical utility fails ,” Holness said.

He told the House that the trucking of water to the most affected areas will continue.

“The NWC is engaging every available truck to increase its reach to assist, and additionally they have extended opening hours for the loading bays to ensure deliveries way into the night,” he indicated.

The JPS has reported that power has been restored to approximately 655,000 customers, which represents 94.6 per cent of the customer base.

- JIS News

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