(Jamaica Observer) Electricity theft continues to hit the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) hard, amounting to US$32 million so far this year. In fact, so pervasive has been the illegal activity that the company is acknowledging that it is running out of options to stem it.
“It’s at a high rate, and I see it increasing, simply because as electricity rates increase… We have run out of options, we have just run out of options,” Kelly Tomblin, JPS’s president and CEO told the Jamaica Observer Exchange on Monday.
“We have put in the meters, we have a war room now and inside there, as people discuss the issue, you see the tension building around the fruitlessness of their efforts,” said Tomblin, who described the theft of electricity as a symptom of the social problems affecting the country.
Electricity theft has been a perennial problem for the JPS and is most visible in urban and rural inner-city communities. However, Tomblin and the JPS’s Head of Corporate Communications Winsome Callum were yesterday quick to point out that people from high-income as well as middle-income groups are also involved in the theft of electricity, primarily through more sophisticated methods.
In recent years, the company has been very public in its thrust to install anti-theft devices in several inner-city communities as part of its efforts to clamp down on losses.
But those efforts, Tomblin revealed on Monday, have barely touched the surface of the problem, as an increasing number of individuals are stealing electricity from the company’s network.
“As I understand it, we have had a group of people, for whatever reason, who have never paid an electricity bill. No technology in the world can change that; it is a socio-economic issue and it requires very strong political and police will to change that, and it requires something deep,” said Tomblin, even as she pointed to ongoing efforts to address the issue through government agencies such as the Planning Institute of Jamaica.
She also asserted that the company will continue to explore strategies that can be implemented to strenghten the existing methods used to remove illegal connections.
“Taking down throw-ups is the silliest kind of activity we have been involved in since I got here. We take them down, they put them back up; we take them down, they put them back up,” said Tomblin as she lamented the amount of productive time being spent by the company’s linesmen and other personnel to remove illegal connections.
“I shouldn’t know a thing about anti-theft meters — maybe a little tiny bit — but now I have become an anti-theft expert,” Tomblin said.
The JPS CEO, who took up the position earlier this year, said the situation is being compounded by the refusal of some JPS employees — due to personal safety reasons — to carry out disconnections in areas where electricity theft has been identified.
According to her, the company’s employees have, on occasions, been threatened and as a result are fearful, even when they are accompanied by the police. “They say their lives have been threatened, their families are afraid.
