Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter
NELSON
THE RECENT electricity hikes will top the list of issues to be discussed at Thursday's Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Monitoring Committee meeting.
According to Senator Dwight Nelson, president of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU), this is among the burning issues to be brought to the table by the JCTU.
Senator Nelson is maintaining that the increases are unjustified. He told The Gleaner yesterday that in the spirit of the MoU, which was signed last year with the Government and the JCTU, the increase should not have been granted.
"We maintain that the Government should have intervened and ensured that the increases were not granted," he said.
MARGINAL INCREASE
Last week, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) approved a seven-cent increase per kilowatt-hour on electricity bills to allow the light and power company to raise $457.5 million over a two-year period.
The money is expected to pay for the repair of its distribution and generation system, damaged by Hurricane Ivan almost a year ago.
The increases will take effect in October. The OUR had rejected nearly two-thirds of the JPS's claim of $1.4 billion. But Senator Nelson said that the latest increase does not sit well with the unions.
This hike is the second increase to have hit more than 15,000 public sector servants who, through the MoU, had agreed to a wage restraint of two years with the promise that Government would manage its economic policies by ensuring that inflation remained in single digits and that prices are not escalated.
Last week, Jamaicans taking the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) buses had to fork out more money to pay for a 67 per cent increase in transport fares that was granted by the Govern-ment. Following on the heels of the hike, taxi fares also went up.
Responding to queries about the unions' commitment to the MoU, which expires on March 31, 2006, Senator Nelson said that the JCTU will stand by its word.
"We have seven more months of endurance and after that, it is kaput!" he said.
But Senator Nelson is in agreement with the call by his colleague, Danny Roberts, vice-president of the JCTU, for the Government to remove the tax on uniform and laundry allowances, as well as bring forward to October the tax threshold that was scheduled to be increased in January.
