Almost half a year has passed since Hurricane Melissa roared ashore on Jamaica’s western coast, packing maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour that left widespread destruction in its wake. Even after months of coordinated recovery work, more than 2,700 households and businesses across the hardest-hit regions remain cut off from the island’s electrical grid, according to official updates shared by Jamaican government leaders.
Minister of Energy, Transport and Telecommunications Daryl Vaz revealed the latest figures during Wednesday’s weekly post-cabinet press briefing held at Jamaica House. Of the remaining customers without power, 2,561 are located in Westmoreland parish, while another 203 reside in neighboring St Elizabeth. These outages persist despite intensive restoration efforts carried out by Jamaica’s primary power provider, Jamaica Public Service (JPS) Limited.
Vaz outlined the cascading set of challenges that have slowed progress for crews working to rebuild the damaged power network. Persistent torrential rainfall and widespread flooding across the two parishes have already forced 13 total days of work stoppages, putting the entire restoration timeline behind schedule. Even in areas where main power lines have been fully repaired, dozens of individual properties remain too damaged by the hurricane to safely connect to service, leaving their owners waiting in limbo.
Difficult geography and damaged infrastructure have compounded weather-related delays, Vaz explained. Most of the remaining outages are concentrated in hilly, remote regions where narrow, winding roads have been partially destroyed by the storm, and frequent landslides block access for heavy, specialized service vehicles. A large share of the unfinished work requires digging through hard, rocky terrain to install new power poles, a labor-intensive process that moves far slower in sparsely populated areas with limited access routes.
Despite these persistent setbacks, Vaz emphasized that overall recovery from the October 28 storm remains far along. Across Jamaica’s total customer base of nearly 700,000, 99.6 percent have now successfully regained electrical service, a milestone that reflects the scale of progress made in the past six months.
Between April 1 and April 13 alone, restoration teams made measurable gains: 258 additional customers were reconnected, and power infrastructure work has been substantially completed across 26 separate communities split between Westmoreland and St Elizabeth. Of these communities, 11 are located in Westmoreland and 15 in St Elizabeth, including high-impact, hard-to-reach settlements that have been offline since the storm hit.
This recent progress would not have been possible without rapid, targeted government action, Vaz stressed. Back in December, Jamaican lawmakers approved a $150 million U.S. loan specifically to fund hurricane power restoration, a move that came after early projections warned full recovery could drag on into late 2026 or even early 2027 – an outcome Vaz said the government deemed completely unacceptable. “This underscores that real commitment requires strong deliberate measures, not words alone,” he added.
Looking ahead, the government’s official target is to substantially complete all feasible power restoration work by April 30. The only exceptions will be customers facing extreme, unresolved barriers such as ongoing lack of safe access to their properties. To date, more than 1 billion Jamaican dollars have already been spent on reconnecting affected households.
Multiple government agencies are collaborating to speed up the final phase of work. The Jamaica Social Investment Fund is supporting local recovery efforts, while the Ministry of Labour and Social Security is advancing the Restoration of Owner or Occupant Family Shelters programme, which helps homeowners repair damaged properties to meet safety standards for power connection. Once these repairs are finished, JPS crews will be able to connect the remaining eligible customers as quickly as possible.
Vaz also released the full list of communities that have substantially completed restoration work between April 1 and April 13. In St Elizabeth, the communities are: Beersheba, Brighton, Brompton, Cedar Valley, Cheviot Hill, Claremont, Cotterwood, Cottage Lane, Sandy Ground, Crawford, Dalintober, Hopewell, Flint River, Lower Works, Mulgrave and Retirement. In Westmoreland, the completed communities are: Asthon, Amity, Bethel Town, Barneyside, Burnt Ground, Ferris, Haddo, Hertford, Mearnsville, Ramble, Seaford Town, and St Leonards.