'Sick and tired' - Vaz says prelim findings of June 5 blackout point to ‘same old failures’

Energy Minister Daryl Vaz says preliminary findings into the June 5 all-island power outage are "completely untenable and unacceptable", arguing that they point to the "same old findings" identified previous in past system failures. 

In a post on X on Tuesday afternoon, Vaz said the ministry's summary findings from a preliminary report point to “a failure or delayed operation of the primary protection scheme” at the Hunts Bay and Rockfort lines.

Those are the same power stations and critical infrastructure corridor that featured in Saturday’s press conference at which Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) CEO Hugh Grant acknowledged the “cascading” collapse of the national grid.

According to Vaz, that failure resulted in an “extended fault duration”, an “escalation of the disturbance”, and “wider propagation of system instability” across the island.

"The reports suggest the same old findings as in previous instances regarding system failures," he wrote. "In 2026, with improved technologies and greater experience, we should not be exposed or be vulnerable to the challenges we experienced in 2006, approximately 20 years ago."

Jamaica has recorded six all-island system shutdowns since 2006, the last prior to Friday's collapse coming in April 2016, Vaz said on Saturday. 

In his social media statement Tuesday, Vaz also disclosed that additional outages have been reported across the island since grid restoration was completed on Saturday morning, raising fresh questions about the stability of the network in the aftermath of the June 5 event.

"The Jamaican people are sick and tired of this," the minister wrote, "and quite frankly SO AM I!"

Vaz said he will provide a “comprehensive report” to Parliament later this week. 

JPS, Jamaica's sole electricity distributor operating under an exclusive Government-issued licence, has faced sustained scrutiny since Friday's outage. 

Grant, who described a grid-wide collapse as something the company does not "expect to happen," said lightning strikes caused damage at the Rockfort sub-station in east Kingston and a broken conductor on transmission lines connecting the Hunts Bay and Newport stations.

The Office of Utilities Regulation whose director general Ansord Hewitt said his agency had written to JPS requesting a preliminary report, is also conducting its own review. 

JPS is required under the regulatory framework to submit a full incident report within 30 days.

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