So, what does the other utility company have to say about the power outages that have been plaguing Caye Caulker? This afternoon, we spoke with BEL's Corporate Communications Manager, and we asked her: Will there be a reliable power supply for the rest of the island's tourism high season? Here's what she had to say:
Vonetta Burrell - Manager, Corporate Communications, BEL
"Since the evening of December 26th, we had a failure to two of our generating units on Caye Caulker. Caye Caulker, as you know, is the only municipality that's not connected to the national grid, and they're supplied by diesel generation. Equipment fail, and we had our staff go out to resolve the issues and conduct the repairs. So, we had some intermittent outages over those few days. On Monday night, we had to conduct an emergency outage, that involved some load shedding, which affected a portion of the south of the island. Our team worked, and by 8:45 in the evening, we had restored power to most of the customers that were affected, and that generating unit is back up. Today, we have teams that are continuing work to repair and restore service to the fourth unit that needs to be connected to ensure that we can maintain reliable supply to the island."
"Once those works are completed, there should be no need for outages or for any load shedding on Caye Caulker."
Reporter
"The tourism-related stakeholders are upset. They're saying that this is a recurrent issue."
"As far as they're concerned, visitors have already started canceling their vacation because they had no water or electricity. What's the company's perspective on the fact that you guys are being attributed as part of the problem?"
Vonetta Burrell
"Well, of course, any lack of supply to our customers is of great concern to us. Our job is to keep the lights on and to make sure that we maintain consistent, reliable, and quality supply to our customers. In particular, the tourism industry, we recognize their concerns. We are of course working tediously to make sure that we can provide some sense of normalcy on Caye Caulker."
"We know that this is the height of the tourism season. We want to cause any shortfall in that section of the economy, that revenue sector. therefore, we recognize and We're working to make sure that we can restore power to Caye Caulker. We would not want to negatively impact the tourism sector. We apologize to our customers on Caye Caulker. We ask for their continued patience in the event that there is any need to have any outages to make sure that we can continue to supply them."
"We know that Caye Caulker is one of the fastest-growing municipalities in terms of the tourism industry. They're experiencing rapid growth. We are aware of the situation. Our long-term plan is to interconnect the island to the national electricity grid by early 2021."
BEL is hoping to get its 4th diesel generating unit back on Caye Caulker up and running as soon as possible. That should resolve any further need for load shedding.
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