Dawn Ritch, Contributor
UNBELIEVABLY, THE Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has agreed to our water rates going up next month by 26 1/2 per cent, as though the bills don't go up every month anyway. The National Water Commission (NWC), a barefaced government monopoly providing poor and fitful service, had requested an increase of over 40 per cent.
I once saw gardening described in a foreign newspaper as 'a frugal pleasure'. Clearly they don't pay our water rates, which have been rising steadily and steeply over the past several years. Try to tend a garden, and when the bill comes it feels like you're paying to fill a swimming pool.
The public is asked to put its objections in writing to the OUR by tomorrow. I hope there is enormous objection.
Shortly before the General Election last year, the Minister of Finance, Dr. Omar Davies, announced that the Government was writing off $6 billion for the National Water Commission. Neither then nor since, has the public been told what was the cause of these monstrous losses. Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition remarked on it a couple of times, and then promptly dropped the subject. It remains a deep, dark secret.
WATER RATE INCREASE
This water rate increase ought to put it on the front burner.
A 25 per cent increase on an indispensable commodity like water is a murderous increase. Moreover the increase is caused by a monopoly that wastes $6 billion in cash, wastes over half of its production in leaks, charges for sewerage systems that don't work and to which most rate payers are not connected, and never seems to have any money or parts to fix the obvious leaks which persistently occur in Kingston and townships throughout the island. Such an operation cannot be entitled to another cent from consumers. Half the time we can't even get water in our pipes. And when it comes it costs a fortune.
One Portmore man whose water bill was $2,000, and the PAM an additional $4,000, went to the office to report that he knew nobody named PAM, "Mi no deh wid any Pam, no woman at mi yard doan name Pam, and yu mus tek har off a mi bill!"
'Pam' reflects the devaluation of the Jamaican dollar since 1996. She's the economic hurricane blowing the money out of our pockets as soon as it's there. The NWC describes this force as a 'Price Adjustment Mechanism', or the weighted average of the Foreign Exchange Rate, Electricity Rate and Consumer Price Index. On the street though, PAM is "All de people dem dat tief de water, and we 'ave to pay fi dem pon our bill."
From any angle, the PAM charge is rooted in the Government's mismanagement of the country's public and economic affairs. It therefore is a gross injustice to every single rate payer in the island.
Readers will remember that the $6 billion loss at the NWC was occasioned on Dr. Karl Blythe's watch as the then Water and Housing Minister. During that time over $5 billion was also paid out for work not done in 'Operation PRIDE'.
TECHNOLOGY GAMBLE
Phillip Paulwell, then Minister of Technology lost over US$300 million not too long ago in a technology gamble in grants and loans to overseas firms in Jamaica. That was another $2 billion more of public funds down the drain.
The Minister of Finance himself admits to spending more money than he had in the till in order to win the fourth political term. And yet the Government has the unmitigated nerve to raise the water rate?
For eight years this administration paid the teachers nearly $800 million more than they thought they had. A year ago they increased their own pay on the pretext that they're linked to the Permanent Secretaries and teachers must get more money as well. Is there any time at which the Government knows exactly what it's doing?
Even more amazing, and 10 years after precipitous decline of the country the the Government now proposes to introduce an import tariff on cement to protect local production. And what industry is this? The Cement Company, a factory now owned by Trinidadians who are entitled to send their profits out of the country.
The president of the Jamaica Manufacturers Association JMA has taken out big advertisements in support of the proposed import tariff on cement. Even the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) now headed by a PNP Senator, has taken out an advertisement supporting the tariff under their 'Eat Jamaican' banner campaign. Is this a deliberate irony? Jamaicans must now eat dirt, or cement dust as a patriot's duty?
Throughout the long and painful collapse of the Jamaican economy, neither of those patriotic organisations lifted a finger to protect the Jamaican dairy industry from imports, Jamaican garment, furniture and other manufacturers or the indigenous banks when crunch time came for the financial sector in 1996. Nor did they raise a protest when it was revealed that government agencies and big companies were having staff uniforms manufactured abroad. They don't say "Boo" when we're exporting Jamaican jobs.
COMMERCIAL INTERESTS
It seems treacherous therefore, that an expensive advertising campaign is now being run by these associations, themselves supposedly strapped for cash, to support the commercial interests of a company, the owners of which are not Jamaican.
Such support is a brazen injury to the good name of hundreds of Jamaican businesses that vanished without a trace, and along with them whole sectors. The JMA and the JAS ought to be ashamed of themselves for watching without a peep the decline of Jamaican livestock and agriculture, manufacture and finance. To add insult to injury as soon as a foreigner steps in to buy the assets that we have lost, they get bargain prices, tax breaks and government dollars. These concessions were not afforded to the Jamaican owners of these assets, as would have been the moral thing for the Government to do.
I don't think the Caribbean Cement Company should enjoy any more protection in its operations than that accorded any Jamaican-owned company. And that is zilch. Why should Trinidadian business in Jamaica be entitled to protection, and a Jamaican business not?
Already the Government gave Trinidadians clean balance sheets on the entities they bought from the remains of the indigenous financial sector. Tariff protection, however brief, for a Trinidadian-owned company would be going too far. I remember in the not-too-distant-past that chicken got a break, and the price went through the roof despite promises to the contrary. And that wasn't even a monopoly.
A Government has an obligation to provide basic resources like water, food and shelter at reasonable costs to her people. This administration is failing miserably to protect us in this most minimal of duties.
