NWC still unable to reach some of its stations following Hurricane Melissa

The National Water Commission (NWC) says there are six stations it has not been able to access since the passage of Hurricane Melissa last month.

Further, there at 200 NWC facilities where a second phase assessment has not yet been conducted, acting vice president of operations at NWC, Dr Phillipa Campbell-Francis, disclosed on Wednesday.

A second phase assessment is when NWC technical teams revisit facilities and indicate which ones can be restarted.

The government-owned company is the largest supplier of potable water in Jamaica with over 551,000 customers.

One of the stations the NWC is unable to access is located in Content, St Elizabeth, Campbell-Francis disclosed while addressing the Infrastructure and Physical Development Committee of Parliament.

“We have seen the facility, but the area is flooded and, therefore, we have not been able to go in to do the electro-mechanical assessment,” she explained.

The other five stations are located in Hanover and Westmoreland.

The 200 facilities that have not yet had a second phase assessment are located “in some of worst-hit areas”, the NWC vice president told lawmakers.

“Those that are in the country areas.”

St Elizabeth, Westmoreland, St James, Hanover and Trelawny are the parishes that were hardest hit by Hurricane Melissa, the category five system that made landfall in Jamaica on October 28 with winds of up to 180 miles per hour.

Two weeks after the passage of the monster hurricane, the NWC vice president says water has been restored to 75 per cent of its customers nationally.

The remaining customers are mainly located in deep rural areas, she said.

In St Elizabeth, 28 per cent of customers have had their water supply restored; 43 per cent in Westmoreland; and 63 per cent in Hanover, the NWC disclosed.

Campbell-Francis said one of the biggest challenges facing the NWC is inadequate generators.

She said the utility company has compiled a “critical list” which indicates that an additional 100 generators are needed to help restore water in some areas.

“The greatest problem for us is the lack of generators because if we had enough generators it means that we could get most of these systems back up because most of these systems did not have electro-mechanical damage,” Campbell-Francis explained.

- Livern Barrett

Follow The Gleaner on X and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com or editors@gleanerjm.com.