Energy is set to wreck the weak CARICOM. Energy is a ball and chain hobbling the Jamaican economy. Energy, if it is true that human action is the principal cause of global warming and climate change from global warming, is set to wreak havoc upon the entire planet.
Omar Azan, a former president of the Jamaica Manufacturers’ Association, in a blistering speech last week, said government-subsidised electricity cost in Trinidad & Tobago was giving an unfair advantage to that country’s manufacturers in CARICOM trade. At US$0.05 per kilowatt-hour, the cost of electricity in T&T is some six times lower than the cost of electricity in Jamaica. Azan has threatened to lock down the country over the issue. Others have been openly advocating that Jamaica should withdraw from CARICOM.
Meanwhile, a powerful coalition of private-sector companies has been shouting, through expensive advertisements, that the cost of electricity has increased by 135 per cent since 2001 and advising us to “pull the plug on high light bills”. Exactly how to pull the plug has been left unspecified, like the Azan lockdown of the country.
Citizens United to Reduce Electricity (CURE) has gone the unprecedented route of taking action in the Supreme Court to test the legality of the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) all-island monopoly. CURE is asking the court to declare null and void the licence granted in 2001 by the energy minister and renewed in 2007.
The licence, according to the claimants, is in breach of Section 3 of the Electric Lighting Act of 1890. CURE attorney Hugh Wildman is arguing that under the act, and in particular Section 3, the island is broken up into areas over which the responsible minister may grant a licence to either the local authority or a private company to generate and transmit electricity.
“What is not permissible under Section 3, or any other section of the act, is an exclusive licence over the entire island. A licensee or undertaker is confined to the particular area over which a licence is granted,” Wildman submits to the court.
“The language of the legislation,” he points out, “throughout speaks in the plural, that is, undertakers and not undertaker. The legislation clearly expressed in no uncertain terms that there must be several undertakers generating and transmitting electricity throughout Jamaica. The concept of exclusivity is unknown to the legislation.”
And with respect to the Office of Utilities Regulation, Wildman said Section 4(3)(i) of the Office of Utilities Regulations Act