OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar is saying the 11-hour power outage which crippled all of Trinidad on Wednesday is no joke and no laughing matter.

This was her response to a joint press-conference held on Thursday by Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young, National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds, TTEC general manager Kelvin Ramsook and representatives from the various arms of national security, called to discuss the outage.

Noting Ramsook's own description of the of the "catastrophic failure" at TTEC's installations which led to the islandwide power outage, Persad-Bissessar said the press conference was nothing more than a PR stunt by Government.

In a press release issued about an hour after the press conference, Persad-Bissessar said what was most startling was Gonzales' reaction when asked by reporters about what assurances he could give that such a massive failure would not happen again.

"The Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales began laughing. He even callously stated that the Police Commissioner could not give an assurance there would not be another murder,” she said.

The Opposition Leader claimed the blackout "devastated" the perishable stock of businesses and facilitated criminal activity.

"Yet the government is behaving like it is a joke. I wish to tell these immature ministers that this is no laughing matter.

"Based on the utterances of those present today, Hinds, Young and Gonzales, the Government had no clue about what was happening in the country and worse, had no idea what to do about it," she said.

She said the Government was not prepared to deal with the issue on Wednesday when during that night, citizens had died, there were multiple robberies, citizens felt anxious about the safety of their homes and businesses and many were worried about their loved ones at the hospitals.

She claimed that in many places, citizens had to direct traffic or there was no direction at all which contradicted the comments from the Ministry of National Security of a fully functional national security response during the outage.