More than 33,000 National Water Commission (NWC) customers are still experiencing disruption to their potable water supply following the impact of Hurricane Melissa, according to the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR).
The regulator reports that outages continue to affect customers across seven parishes: Westmoreland, St. Elizabeth, Trelawny, Hanover, Clarendon, St. James, and St. Ann.
St. Elizabeth has been hit the hardest, with restoration reaching only about 55 percent of affected customers so far. This leaves a significant portion of the parish still without regular water service.
Westmoreland has the second-largest number of impacted customers, with roughly 9,000 accounts yet to be reconnected. In Hanover, service restoration has reached approximately 58 percent of NWC customers.
The OUR attributes the slow recovery mainly to electricity supply issues and mechanical problems within the NWC’s systems, which have hindered repair and restart operations since the storm passed.

