EDITORIAL - Stealing with impunity

We share the concerns of paying customers of the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) whose electricity will be turned off for half the day in the JPS's latest effort to combat electricity theft. Yet, we can't but empathise with the light and power company, the stealing of a large chunk of whose output is enabled by an irresolute State and compliant politicians.

Put another way, by maintaining an environment that insulates the thieves, the Government has up to now forced JPS to provide social welfare to dwellers of poor communities, which is like imposing a tax on the company for earnings it doesn't make.

JPS is the sole distributor of electricity in Jamaica. It is a majority ownership by Japanese and Korean interests, representing substantial foreign direct investment - something, given Jamaica's economic circumstance, our Government declares it is keen to encourage.

For years, JPS has been confronted with the theft of its service. Of the 28 per cent of the output that it 'lost' in 2013, 60 per cent went to thieves, translating to hundreds of millions of dollars of unrecovered revenue. Such thievery is often rationalised as the result of the high price of electricity and that it is perpetrated by poor people against a supposedly rich company. The Robin Hood syndrome!

That argument is an inadequate response to the fundamental issues at stake. For instance, with shareholder equity of around US$1 billion, the company's US$9 million in profit last year represented return on investment of less than one per cent.

Moreover, in the past financial year, the company's receivables, at 90 days or more, at US$64 million, were approximately six per cent of its operating revenue. Since other customers are unlikely to have been allowed to owe JPS for so long, we can assume that the debt is largely the Government's, to which must be added the company's enforced social-welfare expenditure in the form of electricity theft.

That's not all. That overdue debt has not only cash-flow implications for JPS, but foreign-exchange risks, given that while the company's income is in Jamaican dollars, the bulk of its expenditure is in foreign currency. Such risks are exacerbated by the company's declining revenues, which would likely cause unease to the company's bankers and impact its ability to borrow for new plant and equipment. JPS is hardly in robust health.

Illegal connections removed

Indeed, no company anywhere could be asked to forgo, or hand over as welfare, the value of nearly a fifth of its output. Few could survive. JPS has tried to combat the problem by having 200 employees, or about 15 per cent of its staff, dedicated to the anti-theft effort. Last year, it removed 197,000 illegal connections, approximately one-third of the amount of its registered customer base - from its system. These and other technological solutions have failed to beat the problem. And they won't.

The solution is primarily political. Indeed, the seven communities against which the JPS has moved, in the capital's western belt and St Catherine, like others where electricity theft is endemic, are mostly garrison communities, those zones of exclusion where our brand of politics breeds a sense of entitlement and impunity.

That perceived right to trespass on other people's property can't be solved by single companies taking civil action or proffering criminal charges. It demands a fundamental shift of political attitudes, combined with a resolute State, especially if the Government is serious about encouraging investment - local or foreign.

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