The Editor, Sir:

Permit me space to provide clarification to an article published on A3 of Thursday's edition entitled, 'JPS and NWC owe customers'. For the avoidance of any misunderstanding, JPS does not 'owe' customers any outstanding money in the sense that the company is not withholding any payments rightly due to our customers for breaches of guaranteed standards.

Our guaranteed standards provide for customers to make a claim on us for compensation on the occasions when we fail to meet certain service targets agreed with the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR). Customers have 30 days to make such a claim. All legitimate claims', are promptly settled and in fact, if we are tardy in processing these claims one of the very standards allows customers to make an additional claim for that as well.

To the extent that our customers have not made claims, potential compensation has gone unclaimed over time. It is this potential sum of money that we know the OUR to have referred to in its report. JPS has actively encouraged its customers to exercise their rights under the guaranteed standards and is in fact currently running a media campaign to publicise these service guarantees.

We take seriously our commitment to improving service quality and we want our customers to hold us to those guarantees.

I am, etc.,

SAM DAVIS

Head, Government & Regulatory Affairs JPS