Business leaders react to blackout: Hold someone accountable

Disappointed by Wednesday’s blackout, business leaders are calling for someone to be held accountable after a thorough investigation and systems to be implemented to prevent a repeat.

Initial reports by the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) has said the blackout was caused after a fault developed at 12:52pm at one of its major circuits called the Union Gandhi 220 KV circuit.

President of the Supermarkets Association of Trinidad and Tobago Rajiv Diptee said businesses must be and feel assured that they are operating in an environment conducive to healthy socioeconomic growth.

Diptee told Newsday, “Last night, we would have had store owners working with their staff whom they would have had to bring out to keep the stores’ (equipment) running and monitoring the situation up until the electricity came back.

“We need to have good systems in place otherwise the confidence wouldn’t there for the business community.

“It was not good for business on the whole…what we saw yesterday - in terms of what the outage can expose the country to- is very frightening.”

Apart from direct financial losses, Diptee said businesses feared falling victim to robberies and other criminal acts during the blackout.

As businesses continue to recover from financial losses due to covid19, he said it was unacceptable for them to have had to deal with recurring blackouts.

Diptee recalled there was also a similar blackout on December 22, 2021. In a release after, T&TEC said that blackout was caused by a problem at an unnamed power plant.

Diptee explained, “Our stores would have had backup generators to provide auxiliary power but that is only for a period of time.

“Yesterday’s outage was from seven to ten hours. In some cases, generators do not last as long without having to refuel them. I am sure other businesses don’t have those systems in place

“I can only imagine how some restaurant owners, and people who were sitting on perishables that require cold chain management, had to deal with the situation.”

Co-ordinator of the Confederation of Regional Business Chambers (CRBC) Jai Leladharsingh predicts the blackout would have affected small and medium businesses the most.

Leladharsingh told Newsday, “These businesses cannot afford their own generators like the large industrial plants in Point Lisas.

“Businesses like these had no choice but to close earlier because of the inherent risk to crime and national security.

“Even if some of them had locked up, their cameras would not have been working because they need electricity and their alarms would not have been working.”

He lamented frustrated business owners in the food, retail and light manufacturing industries have contacted him about lost and damaged equipment.

“WASA had no electricity, so water wasn’t flowing which caused businesses like some light manufacturers to shut down their production schedules and try to run a double schedule today (Thursday). So that incurred some further losses too.”

Several double vendors also told Leladharsingh they did not sell on Wednesday evening because of safety concerns.

Apart from calling for someone to be held accountable, Leladharsingh urged authorities to work on prevention strategies to avoid further blackouts.

He asked, “Why did this thing happen island wide? This a highly unusual event and there is a need to have a proper investigation as to why this happened and those responsible must be held accountable.

“I don’t know what the accountable is because that’s not my job but they must be held accountable.

“That report of the accident and why it happened must also be made public.”

In a statement on Thursday, Greater San Fernando Area Chamber of Commerce president Kiran Singh said “businesses cannot afford situations like these, especially as we are now emerging from the pandemic and the economy is reopening to full operation.”

Singh explained, “Businesses in downtown San Fernando started closing up early. The majority of these businesses occupy the MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Sector). They do not own or have ready access to generators in the event of power loss.

“The loss of income and sales across all sectors were immediately felt as all economic and social activity had to come to a complete stop in the middle of the day.”

Singh said many businesses were also fearful of criminal activity during the blackout with the “fear of the criminal element rearing its ugly head” in San Fernando in recent weeks.

On January 22, Malick Straker and Joel Chambers were shot dead while sitting in a car at South Park Mall while security guard Andy Alberto Macias Hosein was killed during a robbery on February 5 at Ketan Jewellers in San Fernando.

While supporting Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales’s call for the incident to be investigated, Singh said authorities must ensure there isn’t a repeat.

He urged, “This is the second time (recently) we have experienced such a widespread blackout. This one being worst as it affected most of Trinidad.

“We would also like a contingency plan should in case something like this happens it can be rectified in a more expedient manner.”