THE DECISION of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), that consumers will have to pay some $457 million to help offset damage to the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) system in the wake of last September's Hurricane Ivan has not gone down well with the utility company's customers.
The question asked most often is why the JPS could not indemnify itself by insurance against hurricane damage? The reality is that the JPS, like other utility companies in the Caribbean and Florida has found it difficult to get insurance since the devastation of Hurricane Gilbert (1988) and the subsequent unprecedented increase in tropical storms and hurricanes, with consequences for life and property.
Self-insurance was also ruled out as being too costly, although in July 2004, the JPS established such a facility. In September of that year, when Ivan struck, the fund had not attained a level to offset the losses accrued. According to sources, even if the JPS had managed to get insurance with some entity willing to take the risk, the premiums would have been at such a level that the costs passed on to the consumer would have been enormous and would have been stoutly resisted.
It is in the face of all this, we have learned, that the OUR, acting in response to the provisions of the electricity licence, wherein the so-called Z-factor may be invoked if a utility provider cannot meet costs resulting from circumstances beyond its control, agreed to the post-Ivan bill being shared with the JPS customers.
The explanation may be perfectly logical on the face of it, but it will be a hard thing to convince clients now confronted by a larger electricity bill. Of some interest, in the neighbouring Cayman Islands, consumers were ask to pay a three per cent surcharge as against the seven per cent their public electricity provider, the Caribbean Utilities Company had asked the Government to approve.
The JPS meanwhile has dropped the ball by failing to represent itself adequately to its customers. Communication between the company and the community is already over-shadowed by the growing outrage against its billing system which has alienated and exasperated customers islandwide.
If the JPS would address the numerous complaints of strangely inflated bills and do so with urgency, perhaps, then and only then will the public have any sympathy for the other side of the equation.
To borrow from an ancient prayer: "Lighten our darkness we beseech thee ..."
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