Twenty-two thousand Jamaican households still rely on the kerosene lamp and a full moon as the only source of light at nights, 30 years after the first house was electrified under the Rural Electrification Programme (REP).

And for an estimated 8,000 families awaiting their turn to come into the light, electricity might never reach their homes in remote areas, making solar energy their only alternative to the ’tilly’ lamp, according to Keith Garvey, managing director of the REP.

But while Garvey is quite optimistic that some 600 households will get electricity this year, for communities like Iva-Cottage in St Elizabeth this day cannot come soon enough.

“It will be (like) Merry Christmas in this place when the light turn on down here,” said Dave Gordon. “All four days straight people won’t sleep and we would watch television straight through,” he predicted lightheartedly.

His sentiment was echoed by some of his relatives and friends who converged upon the only shop in the community.

The small farming community, which sits high atop the cool hills of Malvern, accommodates more than 40 houses, four of which are powered occasionally by a stand-by generator.

Gordon is one of the fortunate few in the community who owns a stand-by generator which, he said, they use ‘now and then’ to operate the television, refrigerator, a sound system for the small shop, as well as to charge cell phones for some of the residents.

But having a generator is far from being the solution to their problem, Gordon contended, as he frequently has to choose between buying gasoline to operate it or buying food for his family.

“Right now we have everything – television, DVD, fridge, a sound system and just about everything – but the gas is so expensive so we can only afford to use them now and again,” he told the Sunday Observer.

He explained that when he fills the generator with $1,000 worth of petrol, he can only afford to watch the television news during the week or for the children to watch the popular School’s Challenge Quiz on TVJ.

On weekends, the family will indulge in a late movie. However, on such a schedule, he could end up spending close to $6,000 for gasoline per week.

At times, he said, the generator breaks down, forcing him to dig deeper into his pocket to have it repaired or at times replaced, noting that he has been through at least six generators already.

“When this happens, sometimes fi years we don’t have ice water. Sometimes when people go anywhere and get some ice water they can’t drink it because them say it too cold because them no use to it,” he said.

“We can’t store meat, and so sometimes is pure tin things we have to use. When we buy chicken, we have to salt it till the next morning we wash off the salt, otherwise it going to spoil on us. We also have to hang the pork and the beef over the fireside to keep it.”

Some of the residents questioned the reason for them not getting electricity a long time ago, since they are situated midway Mountainside and Malvern, two communities which have light and power for several years now.

Some of the residents refused, however, to buy the REP’s argument that areas which were more densely populated were given first priority.

Admitting that the community was not as populated as their adjoining neighbours, Gordon believed it was the age-old chicken and egg problem.

“The reason why more houses are not here is because there is no light and so it don’t give young people any interest to remain here and build up the area,” he argued.

He said that as soon as the young people graduated from school they would leave the community to live where it was “more modern”.

Shirnette Raymond, another resident of the community, had very little hope that light would eventually get to the community, saying she had grown weary of looking out for the workmen.

Pointing to a clothes iron, hair blower and curling iron, Raymond said she used to use them when she owned a stand-by generator, but since it died on her a few years ago she has had to look longingly at the things she can no longer enjoy.

“Now when we have to iron with the old coal iron it just nasty up we good suit when we have anywhere to go, she complained. “And when people say you did see so and so on television, we feel so embarrassed because is long time we don’t watch television,” she added.

Raymond said fresh meat and milk were precious commodities she could no longer enjoy. “By the time we have to go to Santa Cruz, 17 miles away go buy meat, when we get home it start stink pon we…” was her very graphic description.

She also lamented the fact that by nightfall they had to be in bed because there was no form of entertainment in the community and staying up too late in the lamp light hurts their eyes.

“At nights, if we walk go up the road, when we coming back we drop inna some pothole and pop-up we slippers,” she moaned.

If light should come to the community, she believed, they would also receive running water, another commodity which was absent from the homes of residents in Iva-Cottage.

“If the light was here we would have water and when drought come we wouldn’t feel it so bad,” she said, adding that farming was her only means of income, as not having any electricity limited her options.

The REP’s Garvey empathised with those persons still without electricity, but pointed out that since the organisation’s inception in 1975, a total of 72,000 householders or 92 per cent of the island had been electrified.

He added that the REP was not designed to last beyond 32 years, as the mandate in its early stage of inception was to electrify 4,000 households.

“Our experience, however, is that once a community is formed, then other communities somehow mushroom in very close proximity to it,” he said. “You have a community here and in another two, three years you have people a little half-mile down the road forming another and we have to bring electricity to them.”

For the remaining eight per cent of the island yet to be covered, which equates to 20,000 – 22,000 households and about 750 kilometres, Garvey said some $2.5 billion would be needed to complete this process.

“It would mean that each year in the budget we would need to provide $500 million a year, which would equate to doing 170 kilometres of lines for the next five years or 3,500 houses,” he told the Sunday Observer.

He explained that the REP had always done well with funds loaned by agencies like the Caribbean Development Bank and the San Jose funding programme for financing for the projects.

Negotiations were currently underway for the Venezuelans to provide funding to electrify a number of communities for this year.

“We think REP is now due for another major project to get on stream and I know the paperwork for funding for this new phase is being put together as we speak,” he said.

Asked which parishes would get priority for this year, Garvey said that this would depend on the density. “The communities that are more densely populated are the communities that will get first priority,” he said, adding: “We also look at other things like when the request came in, because our system is totally computerised.”

Garvey told the Sunday Observer that some of the communities at the head of the list for this year were those along the Clarendon corridor, such as Canaan Heights.

He said it was very difficult for the REP to cater to those places with only a few houses, and as such there were areas which would never get electricity.

“Some 6,000 to 8,000 households are so far from the grid system that it will not be economically feasible to provide them with electricity, so we are thinking that solar technology can be used to facilitate them,” he disclosed.

“When you look at what is happening with oil prices, people will have to look at alternative energy, so this is something we will definitely have to look at in terms of finishing up the 100 per cent electrification.”

He noted that the REP already had funds on hand which would allow it to do somewhere between 35 and 40 kilometres of line for this year, or about 600 households.

The REP, he added, offered a scheme which was affordable to the average Jamaicans to have their homes wired. Under this scheme, persons were required to pay $2,000 for the process to begin and the remainder of $18,000 over a four-year period.

“What this means is that they pay about $300 per month and this is paid when they are paying their light bill to JPSCo,” Garvey said, adding that this cost covers wiring for two light bulbs and two sockets and certification by the government electrical inspector.

“So when we are finished, the only thing they have to do is make contact with JPSCo to take out their contract,” he said.

He also pointed out that under the programme, the REP did not discriminate against types of house structures, although they were careful to ensure that they are not wiring fire traps.

“We don’t want to put wiring on a structure that we know that sooner or later will cause an electrical fire …so looking at the integrity of the construction is also very important, but we do not discriminate between board or concrete,” he said.