EDITORIAL - The politics of poverty

We expect the Jamaica Public Service (JPS), the light and power company, will back off in the face of the warning from the regulators that it can't just shut off power for long periods in those communities where at least 70 per cent of the electricity it supplies is stolen.

But JPS made a point which, despite their hypocritical bleating, we hope registered with Jamaica's politicians: they mustn't conflate public utilities and social welfare and the danger for our economy of ignoring the rights of private owners. If we are lucky, too, they may also begin to appreciate that because something is government-owned doesn't mean it is not paid for.

In that sense, the JPS is an opportunity to focus on broader issues, including a serious and, therefore, faster retreat for a politics of zonal exclusion and a return to normal behaviour in Jamaica's so-called garrison communities.

BAD ADVERTISEMENT

The JPS is a private company, owned in the majority by Japanese and South Korean interests, representing the kind of foreign participation in our economy that the Government encourages. Except that the JPS is not a good advertisement for this policy. It manages a mere one per cent return on its equity in a situation where nearly a fifth of its output is stolen and nearly six per cent of turnover is past-due debt, owed primarily by the Government.

The company's failure to defeat the thieves is not its own fault. That is primarily because of an ineffectual Jamaican state that permitted the breakdown in social order and an ascendant culture of impunity in communities where electricity theft is most rampant.

Indeed, this is the whirlwind of a receding politics of muscle, in whose detritus its inheritors are trapped and from which they are unwilling to seriously attempt escape.

So, the theft of around J$8 billion worth of electricity is a kind of tax on the supposedly rich JPS to the benefit of poor inner-city dwellers. It is social welfare which politicians may not have explicitly promised, but in whose extraction they are complicit by their open or implied support for the garrisons.

NWC WOES

The JPS is not the only public utility gripped by this crisis of entitlement, made worse by politicians who are willing hostages to the corralled votes and culture of garrison politics. The National Water Commission (NWC) is another. But the depth of its problem is masked by its government ownership.

It has long-term debt of J$34 billion, which is really money owed by taxpayers. It will add to that problem with a projected loss of $3.5 billion this fiscal year, after a J$6-billion deficit in 2013-14.

Nearly 70 per cent of water produced by the NWC is not paid for, either because it is distributed for free, stolen, or lost from old leaky pipes before reaching those consumers. Further, the NWC does not charge an economic price for water. More pertinently, the NWC has never been run as a serious business, seeking a return with which to finance the overhaul of its infrastructure. It was just another bit of social welfare, like supposedly free health care and the promise of free education, which could not be funded and, therefore, has been improperly delivered.

It is an approach that undermines economic growth, perpetuates poverty and delivers illusions.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.