The Editor, Sir:

This is an open letter to the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR).

I won't wait until your public forums to make known my opinions on the JPS's submission for a 23 per cent average rate increase to the Jamaican consumers of electricity.

First, it would appear that, in a chess-like opening move (salvo moreso), the monopoly supplier of electricity warned, if the increase the company seeks is not granted, then necessary investment to improve the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity might not happen. I must give credit where it is due. This is an excellent opening salvo to the OUR, an organisation which, from painful experiences over the years, is derisively cast in the minds of many Jamaicans as THEIRS (pun intended). And, with a newly-installed head at the helm, it is perhaps meant as a shock-and-awe tactic - always a good opening move.

Mere bluff

Should the rest of us cower at this effective but mere bluff by the monopolist supplier of energy? I am not and it has as much to do with my military training as my knowledge of the arcane science of energy. And, like the great Sir Winston Churchill, I am calling on Jamaicans to stand firm against such intimidatory tactics, and to the OUR, "call de bluff".

JPS went further to state their 'carrot' attached to the end of their 'big stick'. With their investments, contingent no less on the rate increase, we will receive a net decrease in our electricity bill of approximately 30-40 per cent. Hip hip hurray!!

How does this arise? Well, presumably, they will modernise the power generators, transmission and distribution networks. With more efficient energy production, less fuel is required to meet the electrical demands and hence lessen the inevitable pass through fuel costs.

True as this is, nevertheless, the rate increase or energy cost, one of the prime determinants of our electricity costs in Jamaica, would have been increased and would still give Jamaica the unenviable position of being among those with the highest electricity costs in the region and world. Further, as all nations are modernising, our higher relative costs would still remain. Our electricity costs for our productive sectors will still remain dismal in comparison with our trading partners.

No better off!

Hence, having granted this humongous rate increase, we would be no better off! What then should be our response? Call the bluff and deny the rate increase and demand that if they are not willing to fund the modernisation, then we will re-nationalise the entity. Nationalisation is no longer a dirty word - the whole world is doing it. Note what has happened with all the newly nationalised banks in the USA, England, etc. Having done so, we then privatise the generation plants (investors are there aplenty to do this) and retain the transmission and distribution networks in the hands of the Jamaican people.

In this way, the Jamaican consumer of electricity will receive a lower cost of electricity both ways, namely lower rates or energy costs and lower fuel charges!

So, we await your response Mr OUR.

I am,etc.,

TREVOR BOGLE

bogle108@yahoo.com