THE Jamaica Public Service (JPS) has announced that it will, beginning this month, conduct more frequent inspections of customers’ electricity meters as it steps up efforts to detect and respond to cases of meter-tampering.

In a release yesterday, the light and power company said it had “engaged specially trained meter inspectors to carry out more routine inspection of meters, in an intensified fight against electricity theft”.

“Where there are indications of meter tampering, JPS will immediately disconnect the power supply and remove the meters and wires serving the premises,” the company said. “These customers will be required to make contact with the nearest JPS office to regularise their service, and to pay the company for the electricity determined to have been consumed but not paid for.”

The company said while taking steps to introduce new initiatives in the fight against electricity theft this year, it will also “continue the implementation of projects that have already yielded some success in this regard”.

“These include installing insulated or ‘tamper-proof’ power lines in more communities, and expanding the use of the Automated Metering Infrastructure, which allows the company to remotely detect meter tampering. JPS will also be removing the service wires and meters of customers who request that their electricity service be disconnected, as well as those customers who have been disconnected for non-payment and have not made arrangements to be reconnected within 30 days,” the release noted.

According to the JPS, despite the implementation of a range of initiatives aimed at reducing electricity theft, more than 13 per cent of the electricity that it generated was stolen in 2008.

The illegal abstraction of electricity, the company

said, is carried out by legal customers as well as persons who do not have contracts with them.