THE 11-hour-long islandwide power outage on Wednesday was not caused by sabotage.
This from Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales who was part of a high-powered team of Government, TTEC and National Security officials at a press conference on Thursday at the ministry of National Security in Port of Spain.
Also present were National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young, TTEC general manager Kelvin Ramsook, Acting Commissioner of Police McDonald Jacob and Chief of Defence Staff Darryl Daniel.
Both Gonzales and Young flatly denied sabotage behind the blackout.
Young said he expects Cabinet to approve an independent, in-depth investigation into the blackout, regarding the power distribution and national security issues, which will make recommendations to prevent any future recurrence.
Gonzales said, "As you know yesterday was a very challenging day for us in the utilities sector when at 12.52 pm a major disruption occurred on TTEC's distribution and transmission system, where two main transmission lines from Gandhi Village to Union Estate came into contact with a 12 kilovolt line as a result of that disruption.
"It caused a major trip on the distribution system around Trinidad and Tobago, causing all of the machines and plant at TGU to go out of operation. As a result of that major disruption at TGU, the other standby measures that we had in place from Trinity and Powergen did not provide the level of sustainability to the distribution system causing all of the machines and plants to go down."
A reporter asked if the outage should be blamed human error, equipment failure or interference.
Ramsook said he preferred not to comment yet, until the investigation ws completed. "Sometimes when you are dealing with issues certain things show up and then you realise it may not be that aspect of things," the TTEC head said.
Gonzales then said, "A preliminary report was presented to the Prime Minister. It was passed through me from Mr Ramsook and was presented to the Prime Minister.
"It was quite evident, it was quite clear, that there was no sabotage or nothing from a human perspective that would have resulted in that disruption that took place yesterday. So I want to make it abundantly clear."
Asked if he could guarantee no repeat blackout in future, Gonzales laughed.
"When I took my oath of appointment, I would have liked to assure the country that something of this nature would have never happened especially under my tenure
"I'm sure the Commissioner of Police would wish to assure the country that tomorrow would never have a murder. These things all dwell in our heart and we only wish the best for TT. But there are things that are completely outside of our control."
Pressed for details on the fault which caused the electrical disruption, Young said, "We do not want to prejudice any investigation that we intend to take place etcetera. There's absolutely nothing
