Peter Espeut | Subsidising the garrisons

There has been a flurry of outrage and indignation over the revelation that both the National Water Commission (NWC) and the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) pass on their losses due to leakage and line losses and theft to their paying consumers. Christopher Columbus!

This has been the norm since the age of garrisons began in the first decade after Independence. It is incredible that some – especially politicians – are now claiming that they never knew this all along.

The political garrisons established in the 1960s and ‘70s which became zones of exclusion; crime was low because the areas were policed by area dons with their armed enforcers, who dispensed jungle justice. Residents were guaranteed freedom from the presence of the police in their communities, as well as freedom from JPS and NWC meter readers.

This is a peculiarly Jamaican form of political corruption which has become accepted by some.

But we know that nothing is really free; electricity and water cost real money to produce, and the JPS and NWC staff have to be paid. Somebody has to pay for the ‘free light’ and the ‘free water’ – these costs are passed on to us.

To be complete, with respect to the delivery of treated water, I must mention leakages and ‘social water’. It has long been known that more than 60 per cent of the water collected and treated by the NWC, and put into pipes under pressure for distribution, leaks out and is wasted. That water still had to be paid for; the NWC would simply double the bills of its paying customers to cover the cost.

Some of the water pipes in city Kingston are more than a century old, as are many of the sewer pipes. It was explained to me that water lockoffs in some parts of the city are impossible, because the instant you turn off the pressure, untreated sewage (in which the water pipes are bathed) would be forced into the water pipes, which will end up in people’s homes.

SOCIAL WATER

I am pleased that recently the NWC has spent millions with a consulting firm trying to detect and fix the leaking water pipes to reduce their losses, but I am not sure how successful this has been.

Social water refers to the thousands of standpipes across urban and rural Jamaica to which residents had free access; there was no limit to the quantity of water each person could collect, and it was not uncommon to see standpipes running freely, wasting water. Who paid for that water? I believe that the Government subsidized some of it with taxpayers’ money (which meant that we paid it), and the rest was added to our bills.

On top of the cost of leakages and social water, since Independence, water rate-payers also pay the cost of all the water that the residents of political garrisons use (steal).

Sad to say, this type of political corruption is practised by both political parties to this day; despite exposure, and the many calls to dismantle their garrisons, the politicians and their political parties stoutly refuse to do so.

And you and I have to pay for it!

It is a government agency – the Office of Utilities Regulation – which authorises the NWC and the JPS to pass the costs of electricity and water theft on to us, as official government policy.

There is no other way to describe this except to call it institutionalised corruption. It will only end when garrisons are dismantled, and it seems neither the PNP nor the JLP are willing to do that.

Peter Espeut is an environmentalist and development scientist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.