VINLEC CEO calls on Vincentians to make reports on faulty poles

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of St Vincent Electrical Services Ltd (VINLEC) Thornley Myers is calling on Vincentians to make reports when there are faulty and defective utility poles in their communities.

This call was made at a press conference last Tuesday at VINLEC’s headquarters in Paul’s Avenue.{{more}}

“We have a problem that we need to address and be better at it; there is no question about it. We rely on our customers to inform us when street lights are not working, but we also need to be more responsive,” Myers noted.

He stated that across St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), VINLEC has 26, 000 utility poles and 8, 100 street lights and since there is no technology to monitor the utility poles, help from the public is needed.

“We want our customers to keep telling us when streets lights aren’t working, because we don’t have any technology to tell us when they are working or when they are on 24 hours.”

“We also notice that when they are on 24 hours we don’t get a call; we also want to get that call too. We also want that call to tell us…there is a street light that’s on 24 hours and at the same time we want to enhance and improve our response to the fixing of street lights,” Myers also stated.

Public relations officer Tamara Job-Sprott also took the time to point out that there is a procedure in place for reporting a fault.

“There is a process that we want to encourage persons to follow. We have an emergency number which is 456-1540, or we encourage persons to report it directly to customer services…”

She explained that many persons often report the matter to any VINLEC employee, who in turn may not always remember to report the fault.

“We also like to have the pole number and if there is no pole number there, then there is always one that’s close by or the closest landmark and that’s where we are able to identify that pole and make that repair as soon as we can; so that’s what we want to encourage persons to do,” Sprott noted. (CM)