By EARYEL BOWLEG

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

WORKS Minister Desmond Bannister stressed that recent Bahamas Power and Light electricity outages are not due to power generation issues.

On Monday, there were reports of a power outage in western New Providence before 9pm. The Tribune understands that it was caused by a trip on one of the circuits resulting in portions of two separate substations coming offline.

Mr Bannister admitted yesterday that BPL does have distribution and transmission challenges, which the company is working on.

“….The outages that BPL (have) had have not been related to generation. Last year June this time, we were having major outages everywhere. We’ve not seen those outages. I don’t anticipate we’re going to have generation outages. If we have outages they may be the same kinds of challenges that we’ve had recently,” he told reporters outside of Cabinet.

Although he was not able to give a reason for the electricity going off this week, he offered explanations for other incidents.

“There was a challenge a little over a week ago where BPL was energizing a new substation on the Gladstone Road area and employees of BPL made a mistake and I’m so glad that they’re alive today because they made mistake that could’ve cost them their live and so that challenge cause some outages in the West and in Sky Line (Drive),” he said.

“And then shortly after that a contractor who was actually working out in that area who was doing some work, some road works impacted a cable – a BPL cable. That contractor didn’t work for BPL. That contractor was doing private work and that has caused some outages.”

In reference to repair work in Abaco after Hurricane Dorian, Mr Bannister said workers from the region should be in the country soon to augment Bahamian workers who have been experiencing “fatigue” from working on the devastated island.

“BPL had Bahamian workers down there and many of them had mental fatigue working in that environment. They had to continually come back to New Providence to their families and also to regenerate, but they’re still doing the best that they can,” he said.

“. . .As soon as we open up, we intend to bring in some more workers from around the Caribbean.”