The recent island-wide power outage has once again laid bare what the Opposition has long warned: Jamaica’s National Water Commission treatment plants remain dangerously dependent on the Jamaica Public Service grid, leaving thousands of citizens across the country without access to water.

MP Ian Hayles, Opposition Spokesperson on Water, is demanding immediate answers from the Government and calling for an urgent and decisive policy shift.

“Across this country, thousands of Jamaicans are without water because this Government has refused to make the shift to solar technology. We witnessed the same devastation in Western Jamaica during Hurricane Melissa, and yet the Minister stood before this nation during the budget presentation and offered absolutely nothing new. It is the same old, same old, nearly one hundred per cent dependency on the power grid, and ordinary Jamaicans are paying the price.”

The failure to act, Mr Hayles argues, is not merely an oversight but a governance crisis that threatens public health, tourism, and the daily lives of citizens in heavily populated communities nationwide.

“I am calling on this Government to immediately implement a policy position that moves critical NWC infrastructure onto solar and advanced renewable technology. We cannot continue to hold this nation hostage to a single point of failure. Generators must be deployed now to critical areas, our tourism corridors as well as our largest population centres and residential communities. The people of Jamaica deserve better, and this Opposition will not rest until they get it.”

Hayles is formally demanding that the Government table a comprehensive energy resilience plan for the water sector within the current parliamentary session.