Rudolph Brown, Staff Photographer
Donald Wells, Consul-General at the US Embassy.EXTENSIVE POWER cuts which have been dogging the island since Monday, have crashed computers at the American Consulate, halting the processing of visas there for almost two days.
Donald Wells, Consul-General, US Embassy, Oxford Road, Kingston, speaking yesterday at an American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), business roundtable luncheon at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, Kingston, said the unexpected outages and jolts from the Jamaica Public Service Co's power supply, coupled with rainy weather, had rendered the consulate physically unable to process visa applicants. This, he said, had now created a slight backlog of applications.
Mr. Wells said that since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, the embassy's computer system had been upgraded to do security checks on visa applicants, all of which had to go through Washington, D.C. This added procedure was hardly noticed by visa applicants, as technological improvements to the embassy's communication systems made the process simple.
However, the power cuts and the rainy weather, coming one after the other, sent the embassy reeling this week.
"I think I can say this: we had a power outage! In the consular section our UPS failed and the computer crashed," the Consul-General said in the presence of JPSCo officials at the function, which itself experienced two power cuts.
He said the effect of the unscheduled power outages on the embassy's computer servers prevented them from "physically printing" visas. He explained that even after getting the system up and running again after a couple of days, the bad weather was now affecting their communications with Washington.
"... This time, it really is the weather and we're not making this up," said Mr. Wells. "The telephone lines between us and the American Embassy were somehow damaged by the weather; there was a power surge from some electrical things ... and so we have not actually been able to do a visa because we have to check with Washington".
He said since the beginning of his tenure in Jamaica, he, with the assistance of Ambas-sador Sue Cobb, had sought and were successfully able to make the visa application procedure more efficient, cutting down the waiting period for visa appointment dates from between seven and nine weeks to two days, eliminating the long lines that are usually associated with the embassy.
He said that as a result of the situation this week, a slight backlog had been built up but the embassy was trying to deal with it. Yesterday, he said, in a bid to address the backlog, they had no appointments except a handful of emergency visa cases. Regular visa applications were halted. He, however expressed the hope that the problem would be solved by next week.
For the US fiscal year 2000 - that is, from October 1, 1999 to September 30, 2000 (the latest figures available) the United States Embassy here issued 9,721 immigrant (permanent) visas and 83,013 non-immigrant (visitors') visas.
