(Trinidad Guardian) Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales says the report into the February 16 islandwide blackout will not lead to any punitive action being taken against anyone.
Speaking to the media on Thursday at the ministry’s head office in Port-of-Spain, Gonzales confirmed he too had gotten a copy of the report, submitted by the independent expert committee of Chandrabhan Sharma, Keith Sirju and Allister Guevarro on Tuesday.
The committee presented the report to Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.
“I did receive a copy of the report, the Prime Minister provided me with a copy when he was formally handed a copy and he asked me to urgently read it and since I received it the day before, it is this morning I concluded reading the report,” Gonzales said.
The blackout saw Trinidad losing electricity for over 10 hours on February 16. At the time, Gonzales said there was an issue emanating from the independent producers which impacted T&TEC’s ability to provide electricity to the country.
On February 18, Gonzales made a statement in Parliament about the blackout, saying, “A short-circuit fault occurred on a 12,000-volt overhead line. The line crosses under the two 220,000-volt transmission overhead lines which connect the T&TEC system to the Trinidad Generation Unlimited (TGU) power station in La Brea.”
Yesterday, he said there was nothing in the report which surprised him.
“From the onset, we have been very straightforward with the country with respect to the information that was available to us, with respect to the cause of the blackout and I am happy to say that nothing in that report suggests that we were fundamentally wrong in that report that we put forward to the national community on the cause of the blackout,” Gonzales said.
And although he read the report, Gonzales said he would not be able to reveal its details without the go-ahead of the Prime Minister.
“There is a lot to learn from this, we will await the instructions of the Prime Minister and the decision of the Cabinet in how we intend to move forward. It is not a report that is going to gather dust on shelves, there are some notable recommendations and we intend to act on those recommendations to protect the national interest.”
Asked whether the claims made by Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) president general Ancel Roget that a fallen tree had triggered the blackout were true, Gonzales said the country needs to recognise who were the “noisemakers” in society.
“I am saying that it is unfortunate that he made the statement knowing that a committee was put in place to investigate the cause of the blackout and the committee’s work was ongoing and that we should be responsible to allow the work of the committee to be completed before making any pronouncements on the work of that committee and I just found it was a bit unfortunate but then again, what do you expect from people like that?” he asked.
Gonzales said the report would be laid before Cabinet yesterday afternoon, as he promised its recommendations would not be ignored.
“There is a lot to learn from this, we will await the instructions of the Prime Minister and the decision of the Cabinet in how we intend to move forward, it is not a report that is going to gather dust on shelves, there are some notable recommendations and we intend to act on those recommendations to protect the national interest.”