Ministry of National Security Media Conference - Thursday February 17th 2022

Today's Media Conference was held to discuss yesterday's power outage which affected Trinidad. In attendance were Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young, Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales, Acting Police Commissioner Mc Donald Jacob, Chief of Defence Staff Darryl Daniel, and T&TEC General Manager Kelvin Ramsook. Minister Young confirmed that a decision was taken at today's meeting of the National Security Council for an in-depth, independent investigation into yesterday’s power outage. He said Cabinet will appoint a small team that will come up with recommendations to prevent a recurrence and to ensure capacity building in our power grid system. The timeline for the recommendations from this Cabinet-appointed team is still to be decided. Minister Young said Government was concerned by the island-wide power outage and the Prime Minister was kept up-to-date on the progress to restore electricity at all times. He stated, "This event has clearly demonstrated that there are vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities in the power generation and distribution, there's a breakdown and disruption in the communication system." Minister Gonzales meanwhile confirmed that a Preliminary Report on the power outage was presented to Prime Minister Rowley. He said, "It is quite clear that there was no sabotage, or nothing from a human perspective that resulted in that disruption that took place yesterday." Acting Police Commissioner Mc Donald Jacob noted that officers were deployed to ensure citizens were able to make their way home safely as several traffic lights were out of service. Mr. Jacob confirmed there were two incidents directly arising out of the blackout: 1. At the PTSC compound where some young men challenged a security officer, and one man was shot dead. 2. The Police Social & Welfare Service Station at the Beetham Highway was broken into and a vault stolen. Mr. Ramsook apologised to all T&TEC customers for yesterday's event. He noted that T&TEC was in a position to supply power back to the country between 1PM and 1:30PM. However, two transport lines were impacted and failed. He said the way the operation took place after this forced the other power stations to go into shutdown mode. Mr. Ramsook said it was only at 6:50PM yesterday that T&TEC was able to have some degree of capacity "in a stable mode" at the Penal Power Station. He explained: "That allowed us to bring supply to the other generating stations and allow us to slowly add back capacity to the grid." The T&TEC General Manager said they will have a discussion on future action plans to prevent a similar situation from occurring.