Sections of the island remain without electricity up to press time last night as the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) continued efforts to restore power following a nationwide blackout on Sunday.

Head of Corporate Commmunications at JPS,Winsome Callum, confirmed that the majority of its customers had electricity, restored.

"The last time I checked only a few pockets were without electricity, but I am unable to list those areas at this time," Callum said.

The restoration of electricity follows an islandwide outage on Sunday night which JPS attributed to lightning, high winds and heavy rainfall.

Thousands of Jamaicans were left in the dark after widespread outages leading to several complaints posted on social media about the lack of power as Jamaica entered its 50th birthday.

Some customers in Portmore, sections of St Mary, Portland, and St Andrew are still without supply

As at this morning, service had been restored to more than 80 per cent of JPS' customers, as the company worked through the night to restore normality, a release from JPS said.

"Preliminary indications are that the most significant cause of the outages was a severe lightning strike that affected JPS' Duhaney substation and possibly other areas, just before midnight on Sunday, August 5. Restoration efforts began immediately, with supply returned to most customers within a few hours," the release said.

"JPS has been on high alert since Friday, as we knew the inclement weather conditions associated with Tropical Storm Ernesto would have some impact on the power system. A system wide impact is extreme but must be included in worst case scenario planning," said Ricardo Rennalls, vice- president for technical services.