Dawn RitchJAMAICA PUBLIC Service (JPS) was the jewel in the crown of the public sector. It is an arbiter of the country's peace and prosperity.
This government of intellectuals has not understood this, nor cared to try. Indeed, to your utility bill is added 16.5 per cent GCT, and many hidden taxes. Electricity and energy costs to the consumer have been the historical feeding tree for taxes. Taxes upon taxes piled on.
The Patterson-led PNP administration divested the JPS cash cow to the American private sector. But our Government still has its fingers on the teats.
Mirant has many more fingers, and is milking JPS for all its worth. Newcomer black Americans visiting this country, they have raised the whip over our backs and cracked it. Everybody who doesn't steal electricity in Jamaica has felt it. We are the downtrodden taxpayers of this country, the ones who cannot escape the lash. Mirant has an 80 per cent monopoly on abuse of a captive market.
HURRICANE IVAN RECOVERY DELAYED
Last week, the company announced that it would not immediately implement its Hurricane Ivan recovery cess on our bill. This increase is reported to be about seven-10 per cent monthly. It goes along with all the other steep increases in the rates for electricity, most of them having nothing at all to do with the price of oil.
By the time they add this little increase and that, it's no longer a bill, but a shaggy dog's tail flicking everything to the floor in one swipe. Mirant also announced they will go to the Court of Appeal to increase the Hurricane Ivan award four times over. They have discovered the miracle of compound interest in Jamaica, and there is no bottom to their greed.
Electricity is neither a public nor private discretionary purchase. No amount of public relations can render it so. Conservation beyond a point is counter-productive to economic development and social peace. Cutting off the street lights for non-payment is a callous no-no, but they do it. Then Patterson wrings his hands over the murder rate and sheds crocodile tears.
A poor pensioner who only recently had a monthly bill of $300, now has a bill near $4,000. Between high government taxes and Mirant profit-making, every JPS bill is a Medusa's head. Everyone who looked at this head with its hair of snakes was instantly changed into stone.
William Mahfood managing director of Wisynco which plans a billion dollar expansion said recently that electricity charges were now nearly 50 per cent of his wage bill. He described this as "challenging", which has got to be the understatement of the year.
ELECTRICITY BILL AND BUSINESS
At the other end of the scale, small restaurants have to get rid of their seating area so they can turn off the fans. In effect, you might as well apply to JPS to go into business, and to be allowed to stay in it. The cost of electricity should never become an element which can determine the success or failure of any business.
Electricity rates being charged by a monopoly shouldn't feel like a hold-up in broad daylight. Consumers of an essential service supplied by a monopoly ought to have no other interest in it save reliable supply and a fair price. Unsurprisingly, Mirant is miserably failing to give either. It's a red hot poker up a certain part of our anatomy, but we're told to grin and bear it.
There seems to be no sanction that can be applied to the company, nor adequate safeguards to protect the public. The Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has said that they hope Mirant is not planning to charge interest on the Ivan award, having themselves staggered its implementation. We're being trampled to death by an elephant, and all the OUR can do is tell it weakly to mind the grass. This is monstrous.
This is the same OUR, which in its investigations recently, found that the JPS had massively overcharged thousands of customers. The many millions of dollars still have not been repaid to those customers, yet the OUR is busily granting and allowing the company to implement rate increases. That is not only an injustice, but a dereliction of public duty. What is the 'guaranteed rate' on Mirant's investment? Is it more than public utilities are allowed in the U.S.A?
METER READERS
This overcharging was at the time blamed on the meter readers. But how so many meter readers could suddenly start forgetting their spectacles over the same period remains a mystery, no less so than any kind of mass malfunctioning of the metres themselves. I have two meters installed at home, both of them by JPS, both of them reading the same equipment, one to monitor the other, but it hasn't helped me. I don't know why they bother send out meter readers when they can just programme their computers to suit themselves. The meter reader is like a fig leaf of decency upon their billing process.
Imagine handing the power to turn off our lights to a foreign corporation, without releasing a detailed summary of the terms of agreement with Mirant in a language that the public can understand? It's not like we have any choice in the matter. The Patterson-led administration has created a monster in this divestment over which it predictably has no control.
PHONE BILL AND THE LIGHT BILL
Between the phone bill and the light bill, we in Jamaica spend all our waking moments working for companies in London and Atlanta: Cable & Wireless and Mirant. This is the democratic socialist ideal of national economic independence for Jamaica, the ideal of the black petty bourgeois intellectuals in the PNP, and whom Patterson has placed in authority over us. As a consequence we, the governed, owe our souls to the company store.
Who are the current owners of Mirant? There ought to be public disclosure of any fees paid or shares given to consultants and advisers by the company and its then parent, Southern Electric, when JPS was purchased. There must be a national enquiry going all the way to the U.S.A. where there has to be public disclosure. We want to know who's in charge here.
And if the Government ceded it all to a foreign corporation, we must know that too. The country is furious about the "so-called" contractual rights of Mirant, and we are overdue an explanation.
