Utility Company In Jamaica Wants Government’s Help To Curb Electricity Theft

KINGSTON, Jamaica, March 17, 2020 (CMC) – The Jamaica Public Service (JPS) Company, says it is lobbying the government to put a task force in place, to combat electricity theft in the island.

JPS Chief Financial Officer, Vernon Douglas, told a public consultation of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) that too many persons are still stealing electricity.

“This is a monster that impacts us (the JPS) and you, our customers. The JPS took down 200,000 ‘throw-ups’ last year. We are not a police force. We have asked the Government to create a special task force to deal with utility theft, both electricity and water, so that we can have a police unit that works with us, constantly,” Douglas said.

‘Throw-ups’ refer to illegally connected wires that persons place on JPS power lines to steal electricity, and Douglas told the consultation that the company is also proposing that the government ban the use of incandescent light bulbs, as persons who steal electricity tend to gravitate towards that light source.

“You can buy one 10-kilowatt LED bulb, which gives the same illumination that a 100-kilowatt incandescent light bulb gives, so even if persons are stealing electricity using a LED light, having removed those incandescent light bulbs from the market, we would save 90 percent of the electricity. You, our paying customers, are doing it at home, so let us get these incandescent bulbs out of the market,” Douglas said.

He said the JPS understands that some persons steal electricity because they are unable to pay for it, and as such, it is also proposing that the government put in place a program, similar to that of the Program of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), for those persons.

“We know, we have the genuine poor in our society. We have said to the government, that if a man or a woman has to be on PATH for education, we need a PATH program for the genuinely-poor persons in our country,” Douglas said.

The consultation was held, recently, as part of the efforts to give citizens an opportunity to air their views on the JPS’s proposed rate increase of 4.69 percent.

The JPS said it is investing an estimated J$68 billion, over the next four years, to facilitate improvement projects island-wide. These projects include generation plant upgrades, smart LED street-light installations, grid modernisation and transmission systems upgrade.