CABINET NOTES: The Cabinet invited the INET and Electricity Managers and the General Manager of APUA to its meeting to answer questions related to their portfolios.

i. The Cabinet inquired of the Electricity Manager about lighting dark areas on Airport Road, Friars Hill Road, parts of the City of St. John’s, and several villages including Liberta and Golden Grove.

Dark areas in several public schools throughout the country will also be lit. The Electricity Manager reported that seven hundred lights are available for deployment; in some instances, APUA has arranged to have holes dug to accommodate the forms on which the lights will be erected.

200 lights are solar powered and 500 will have to be connected to the electricity supply. The APUA has also ordered 1,000 additional lights that will arrive in Antigua before the end of the year; many of these will be deployed early in the New Year.

The Electricity Manager asserted that electricity rates are the lowest in the Caribbean, save for Trinidad and Tobago—an oil-producing country where energy costs are exceedingly low.

The General Manager also indicated that a water supply schedule is published daily and that APUA personnel report on the provision of water to districts on the radio, each weekday.

The commercial center of St. John’s will be decorated with coloured lights for Christmas. They are being ordered now to make their erection possible in time for the Christmas Holidays.