THE Heywood family is ecstatic because three months ago, under the Rural Electrification Programme (REP) they received electricity.

This family is among the 300 residents of Coolshade, a district nestled between Mexico and Buxton Town in the green hills of St Catherine, who benefited from the six miles of power lines put in by the REP at a cost of $10 million under the government’s Electricity Authority Programme.

When JIS News visited the Heywoods, the novelty of having electricity was still fresh for them as they are getting accustomed to life with the utility.

“When you come home from work you can relax now and have ice water unlike before when you had to rush and do everything before daylight gone,” says Michael Heywood.

“The beauty of having light is that we don’t have to depend on the radio to listen to the news because we can watch the television,” he adds.

Prior to being connected to the power grid, the family would use a generator, which supplied limited power to the house and made it possible for them to do minimal tasks, which did not include watching television.

Heywood’s wife, Vivienne, says life is so much easier now because some of her chores, such as ironing and sewing, are not as time consuming and laborious as in the days without electricity.

“I spend less time ironing clothes … before I used a coal stove and I heated the iron …. it took a lot of time to heat up in-between pressing,” she explains.

She purchased an electric sewing machine to replace the pedal one she had, and now she can “sew much faster and spend more time doing other things around the house”. The thrifty housewife sews clothes for her family of four.

She says that she has saved money since getting the electricity because when the family operated the generator they would have to purchase gas and engine oil, which, she says, cost “a tidy sum”. But electricity, Vivienne says, is much cheaper.

The pleasures of having electricity in the home also extend to the children who, through television, are “getting more exposure to the outside world”, Vivienne Heywood notes.

The Heywood family believes that electricity will bring more development to their community as, according to them, more people will want to move to and live there.

The glee and joy on the face of Livingston Williams, another resident of Coolshade District, was obvious as he spoke about the work done by the REP in the community.

He says he went to Canada recently and “did not see them kinda light post inna Canada”. He describes the light posts in Canada being as made from wood, while those in the district are made of concrete. They are indeed imposing as they stand between 10.44 metres and 11.99 metres (35 feet and 40 feet) high.

Williams says that while he was in Canada, he bought a freezer in anticipation of electricity finally coming to Coolshade. He now sells ice cream to children from the community and his children are happy that they, too, can have cool drinks when they come home from school.

Samuel Marshall, REP chief engineer, tells JIS News that the task of providing electricity to Coolshade was challenging because of the rocky terrain and the narrow roads leading to the district.

Marshall recalls that compressors had to be used to dig the holes for the poles because the rocks they encountered made it difficult to do the task manually as is the norm.

REP general manager, Keith Garvey, says the process was costly and time consuming. He says that it took about a day or two for some of the holes to reach the required depth. However, he says in the end the task proved rewarding for both the residents and the REP.

Garvey tells JIS News that the electrification project is seen as a means of improving the standard of living for residents, which has always been the mission of the REP since its establishment in 1975.

Garvey explains that the motivation for the programme has more to do with the social aspect and the benefits to the people who are provided with electricity rather than economics.

“Sometimes it may be difficult to justify projects economically, especially when the programme does the low end of the market. However, the programme is committed to ensuring, over a period of time, that all Jamaica has access to electricity,” he says.

Explaining how communities are selected for rural electrification, Garvey says that there must be a project housing density of a minimum of 20 houses per mile. He says that the REP’s role in “planting a seed” in Negril in the late 70s led to the development of the Negril West End into a vibrant tourist area.

The programme receives funding from several international agencies such as the Caribbean Development Bank and the Venezuela Funding Agency, however, the Ministry of Mining and Energy funds the day-to-day operations of the programme.

To date, the REP has supplied electricity to 52,000 households with over 4,800 kilometres of power lines. Approximately 3,000 households will benefit from another phase of the REP this year out of the 25,000 listed in its database of applications.

— JIS News

“When you come home from work you can relax now and have ice water unlike before when you had to rush and do everything before daylight gone,” says Michael Heywood.