JPS promises 31-day billing cycle by next year
THE Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) has given its assurance that it will be taking the necessary steps to ensure that its billing cycle does not exceed 31 days by next year.
The current cycle is between 30 and 35 days.
“We are now adjusting our meter-reading schedule to ensure that no customer will ever have a bill greater than 31 days, whether it is the actual reading or an estimated bill. And I guarantee that this will be in place next January,” Garth McKenzie, the company’s director of customer operations, told the Rotary Club of Kingston during its weekly meeting at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston Thursday.
“What that will do for you is take out one of the variable parts that will allow you as best as possible to project,” he added.
Thursday, he said the accounts of customers who were billed in excess of between 35 and 45 days last month were being adjusted to reflect 30 days.
McKenzie’s announcement came more than a week after the Office of Utilities Regulations (OUR) ordered the company to move to adopting a billing cycle not exceeding 31 days.
The light and power company came under fire last month after it used a 41-day cycle to bill hundreds of its customers.
According to McKenzie, the company tenders seven million invoices on an annual basis arising from 28 million readings, which meter readers have to take manually and store into a computer.
“In a system that has such an intense human interface, our error rate of two per cent is understandable,” he said. “There is room for improvement, but things are not as bad as they would be made out to be.”
In terms of easing the burden of fuel costs, McKenzie said the company plans to retrofit generating plants in Bogue to compress natural gases, in order to reduce its energy bill by an estimated US$60 million.
“We are trying to also rehabilitate some hydro plants we have in the hills of Constant Spring to add to the stock of generators, and we will be putting in a wind farm in Harbour View in the coming years,” he added.
He also reiterated plans with Petrojam to build a US$300-million, 120 megawatt plant using much cheaper fuel at Hunts Bay. That plant is expected to begin running in 2013.
