Energy Minister Clive Mullings yesterday said failure by the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) to properly maintain its system plunged the island into darkness on Wednesday night, (January 9). He called on the company to provide a report to the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) in 90 days on the true state of its transmission network.

The Minister, who called a press conference at his offices in Kingston, expressed alarm that the collapse of a rotting pole in the Ferry swamp, which links the Tredegar and Duhaney substations, could have caused an islandwide shutdown of the system.

"This is an indication of ineffective, basic maintenance practices by the company as identified by the ministry's technical team," Mullings said.

At approximately 6:10 pm on Wednesday the island was plunged into entire darkness, triggering panic and frustration among householders and traffic snarls at major intersections across the capital.

Full power was returned four hours later.

In July 2006, the country was plunged into a similar unscheduled, islandwide power outage that resulted in the then Government, not satisfied with the reasons given by JPS, inviting a team of Canadian professionals to probe the cause.

The consultants were also asked to propose long-term corrective measures which should be implemented by JPS to prevent another islandwide or widespread power blackout.

But in August 2007, the island experienced another extensive outage causing customers in several parishes to suffer inconvenience.

Minister Mullings said that had the company - in which Japanese firm Marubeni acquired a majority stake last year - acted swiftly on the OUR recommendations made in 2006, Wednesday's blackout would not have occurred. He also expressed disappointment that there was no effective monitoring by the OUR.

The Minister called on the OUR to effectively monitor JPS's performance of its obligations, and where necessary, impose requisite sanctions.

He said he was alarmed that the JPS took a decision that rather than updating the existing system to safeguard against these eventualities subsequent to 2006, the company elected one year later to commence procurement of a new system.