St. John’s Antigua- Residents across the western section of the island may soon see an end to recent power outages that stemmed from glitches at an Antigua Public Utilities Authority substation.

Residents in St John’s and surrounding areas, including Grays Farm and Green Bay, have in recent days been experiencing unscheduled outages on a daily basis. Frustrated consumers have been questioning the reason for the inconvenience and now APUA management is publicly acknowledging the problem and offering assurances that it is being rectified.

“In recent times, we’ve had some challenges, in particular one (at) of our substations at Five Islands,” Electricity Manager Lyndon Francis said. “We also had, on one occasion, a problem with a substation in Belmont that led to some inconvenience to members of the public.”

Francis said the affected area included the lower section of St John’s and stretched through to the Crabbe Hill area.

The electricity chief was clear in explaining that the outages experienced were not related to problems experienced at the recently commissioned Wadadli Power Plant. He added that a team, headed by the chief electrical engineer, has been carrying out the necessary repairs.

Francis, along with Asset Manager and Chief Mechanical Engineer Brian Nicholas, spoke candidly to OBSERVER AM host Anika Kentish about some of the challenges the state-owned electricity provider faced. The second half of the interview will air on Monday’s programme while a comprehensive story will be printed in The Daily OBSERVER.