On April 12 I wrote a column titled, ‘Is JPS likely to give us the full hundred’. In response, JPS head of Corporate Communications Winsome Callum had a piece published as a letter to the editor on April 15 titled, ‘Inaccurate Mr Wignall, here are the facts’.
Space will not allow me to respond to every sentence and paragraph of the JPS letter, but I will deal with the points which appear to be the most important, plus other salient matters that were not fully highlighted in the crosstalk.
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The JPS plant at Old Harbour in St Catherine. |
As a target JPS is easy to beat up on simply because it is a monopoly. Almost every household in Jamaica has no other option but to purchase its expensive power and there doesn’t seem to be any sanctions in place if the company operates inefficiently.
One part of the JPS letter said, “Any balanced analysis of JPS’ operations will need to take into consideration the company’s continued investments in its operations. Each year, JPS spends an average of US$50 million to ensure that our power plants are operating as efficiently as possible, to improve system reliability, and to tackle the monster of electricity theft in order to create a more equitable playing field for our customers”.
It seems to me that outside of an independent audit of JPS, the entity most capable of providing a balanced analysis of JPS is JPS itself, but I would never expect JPS to make such an analysis public. The Corporate Communications arm of a large company like JPS is in the business of churning out treacle for public consumption. It is simply PR on steroids.
The first question is, what exactly has JPS done to increase the efficiency of its units, most of which are 30 years old and have reached their useable limit? Spending money on power plant efficiency and system reliability seems to me to be throwing good money after bad as, short of changing out these units, each spend is patent waste.
The company stated in its letter, “In the last five years, JPS invested US$280 million in operational improvements, while on the other hand recording US$115 million in cumulative profit.”
Great for JPS, the contractors involved and the workers, but where in all of this did the customers, the lifeblood of JPS, get a benefit? Where was the rate reduction?
The letter also said, “Mr Wignall’s article also incorrectly states that JPS does not suffer a penalty for inefficient operations. The fact is that the measures of efficiency, Heat Rate and System Losses, serve as significant sanctions for inefficiency. Heat Rate measures the efficiency with which oil is used in the generation process
