Parliament still to receive February blackout report

The report on the investigation into the Trinidad-wide power outage on February 16 is to be laid in Parliament.

Contacted for comment on April 6, Parliament's director of corporate communications Colleen Holder said up till press time ,the report was not on the order paper for April 8.

She said, “That is not to say it will not be added onto a supplemental list.”

Also contacted on April 6, T&TEC's corporate communications manager Annabelle Brasnelle told Newsday the findings of the report fall under the portfolio of the Office of the Prime Minister.

Dr Rowley received the report on April 5.

The expert investigation committee members who produced the report Chandrabhan Sharma, Keith Sirju and Allister Guevarro.

The committee was appointed after acting Prime Minister Colm Imbert announced in Parliament on February 18 an expert committee would investigate the cause of and response to the outage.

The report was handed over to Rowley in the wake of criticism from opposition MP Barry Padarath. In a statement on April 4 Padarath accused the Government of withholding information and being secretive about an update on the report after seven weeks had passed.

At a press conference on April 1, president of the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union (OWTU) Ancel Roget said the outage was caused by a fallen tree. Blaming the mis-management of T&TEC, he said the commission is understaffed by 300 linesmen, leaving the work to be done by contracted workers, at an additional cost to the commission.

Dr Rowley could not be reached for comment on April 6.