Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has debunked rumours that Sunday’s nationwide electricity outage was caused by the testing of lighting equipment at the Arnos Vale cricket stadium.
Prime Minister Gonsalves, while speaking at a press conference at Cabinet room on Monday, noted that the testing of the lights had not commenced until Monday morning. The claim was also disputed in a Facebook post by Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves.
“The question of information to be put out on a timely basis—we had an electricity blackout for, ranging from, I believe an hour to up to three hours plus in certain areas; and the next thing I hear people are calling me and telling me—it’s wild on Facebook, and this morning the same thing on one radio station that we test the lights, well that’s not true, you know. They’re testing lights today, but the testing of the lights did not chip out anything,” he said
The St. Vincent Electricity Services (VINLEC) in a release dated Monday June 3rd said that the disruption was caused by a switchgear issue at one of their main plants.
Prime Minister Gonsalves, however has called on VINLEC to improve on the promptness of their updates to the public, making mention of a conversation he had with the company’s CEO.
“But I spoke to the CEO of Vinlec, I said listen to me, anytime you have any system failure, it’s important that immediately you get everything out because if you get the information out—doesn’t mean that wouldn’t—there are some people that thrive on mischief, you can’t stop it, that’s the world in which we live, but you have to put the correct information,” the Prime Minister said.
On Sunday, June 2nd, 2024, at approximately 6:30 pm, a service interruption affected all VINLEC customers on mainland St. Vincent. VINLEC’s teams immediately initiated restoration efforts, and power was successfully restored to the entire island by 10:45 pm.
