JAMAICA Public Service Company (JPS) has asked for more time to finalise a report to regulator Office of Utilities Regulation, detailing what appears to be serious anomalies in its billing of customers, and for which the OUR has received a slew of complaints.

JPS was supposed to deliver its detailed report today but late last week the monopoly power supplier appealed to the OUR to extend the deadline until mid-January. The regulator is likely to inform the company of its decision today. The OUR first instructed the JPS, which is majority owned by Mirant Corp in the US, to deliver the report on December 9.

OUR director-general J Paul Morgan told the Observer last night that he is yet to determine the “reason for the extension” and whether it “should be extended to the 14th of January.”

But the OUR also denied yesterday that, in considering the request, it was yielding to the influence of the light and power monopoly, as it still expected JPS to deliver before Christmas day, a related report outlining why 40 customers’ bills jumped, in some cases, by as much as 500 per cent.

The 40 bills were the worst of the over 1,000 complaints of unjustified billing received by the OUR last month.

“Those 40 may provide us with answers as to the cause of the (wider) problem,” Morgan said. The OUR head also expects JPS to cooperate in delivering information on at “least of 20 (of the cases) this week.”

On Saturday, during special opening hours to hear complaints, JPS failed to mullify most of the customers who turned up for explanations on bills that amounted to $8,000, $12,000 and, in one man’s case, a ten-fold increase to $30,000.

OUR’s ultimate sanction is court action, but Morgan is not contemplating that option.

“I would prefer to work on the premise that they would provide the report,” he said. “They cannot be so callous to treat their customers with disregard,” he said. The report on the 40 worst cases will not be as indepth as the wider report for which JPS has requested an extension. That report will determine the factors which caused the bills between July and November to vary substantially.

The OUR expects information on all aspects of the billing process, from meter reading to meter verification; the imput of the data; the estimation of bills; and the computer billing system.

“Each step is prone to error. We are looking right through the process to when the bills are prepared,” said Morgan. “We need to know if it is a systemic problem or if it is only an issue on certain bills.”

The report will also say how many customer’s complained to JPS over the period, and the number automatically “kicked-out” of the computer billing system over the period. The system sends up a red flag or kicks out customers whose bills vary 65 per cent above or below their regular billing.

Such data will signal to the OUR any irregular consumption pattern. The JPS has said that the rise in fuel and the fact that customers got two consecutive bills since Hurricane Ivan in September caused some customer’s bills to fluctuate. But David Geddes, head of consumer and public affairs at the OUR, told the Observer that those “40 cases probably cannot be explained by the rate increase, the discount given by September or the increases in fuel.”

The discount for the disruption of service after the hurricane amounted to 25 per cent. “All those factors probably could not account for the dramatic increase in those bills,” he said.

The rate increase saw an approximate five to seven per cent jump in the bills of household consumers since July, and increases in fuel increased bills by some 12 per cent over the period. If it is determined that the bills do not reflect actual consumption, then JPS would have to credit consumer accounts in the following month.

“In the interim people should pay what they usually pay, if they got bills which (increased). We do not expect JPS to disconnect during the process of review,” said Geddes.

jacksons@jamaicaobserver.com