Dear Editor,

This letter is in response to the letter to the editor written by Hezekan Bolton and published on July 20, 2017, entitled ‘Is the finance minister playing Monopoly with the people’s money?’

I strongly believe Audley Shaw did the best thing to try to cover his phone bill by paying some money for his personal calls and pursue a discount.

Like Bolton, I want to know who paid the finance minister’s monthly bill? Why wasn’t he alerted from August when that month’s bill was over a million dollars?

Bolton asked, “When a story or explanation can be given for a month’s bill being exorbitant, how do you explain 12 months?” I’m gonna refer Bolton to a Nationwide News Network article, published on Tuesday, July 18, 2017, entitled ‘Breaking down Shaw’s massive phone bill’.

“Nationwide News has obtained a copy of the detailed breakdown of Finance Minister Audley Shaw’s $8-million phone bill for a year.

“The minister has been widely condemned for racking up the massive charges.

“The breakdown verifies that some 91 per cent of the charges were for data roaming services.

“Sixty-seven per cent of those charges were for data roaming in August and October alone.

“Minister Shaw was billed $1.5 million in August, and over $4 million in October for data roaming.

“Additionally, the breakdown of the bill reveals that September and December 2016 were also months in which the finance minister used a lot of data overseas.

“Data roaming charges for those months both exceed $600,000.

“The minister’s mobile data usage locally in December was also fairly high, costing taxpayers over $126,000.

“Regular roaming for telephone calls comes in at just a fraction of his data roaming – $308,000 for the entire year…

“According to the documents, Minister Shaw’s local and international calls, as well as text messages, were fairly small, ranging from a few cents to just over $1,000.”

This situation is not special to Jamaica:

On September 19, 2013, the Daily Mail in the UK published an article entitled ‘Mother, 40, hit with £20,000 mobile phone bill after using the Internet in Turkey to put her holiday pictures on Facebook‘.

“After a national newspaper contacted Orange, they agreed to cut the bill from £19,656 to £875 because of ‘exceptional circumstances’.

“A spokesperson for Orange said: ‘The customer used much more data than her chosen bundle. Due to the exceptional circumstances we have offered a significant reduction.’

I also want us to look at the Canadian situation. Thomas Lukaszuk’s data roaming controversy was publicised by CBC News in an article on August 25, 2014, entitled ‘Thomas Lukaszuk apologises for $20K cellphone bill’.

“Lukaszuk said he tried to negotiate with service provider, Telus, over the bill but ‘they told us to take a hike’. Since then, the province has negotiated an improved contract with Telus.

“As for Lukaszuk himself, he said he personally switched providers as a sign of protest. He said he has since ensured a data plan is in place whenever he travels abroad.”

This is so similar to our circumstances here in Jamaica, except the negotiations of the minister with the provider were favourable.

Letter writer Bolton asked Prime Minister Andrew Holness what’s going on? Here’s what’s going on. The prime minister has ordered the finance ministry to advise him within a week on the cap on phone bills of every ministry. He also instructed the telecommunications minister to talk with the providers to set up cellphone and data roaming packages. The prime minister is ensuring this never happens again, unlike the previous Administration who never gave the public any public education on data roaming or put things in place to see it was never repeated.

Minister Shaw is not playing Monopoly, he and the prime minister are fixing a bad situation.

Teddylee Gray

Ocho Rios, St Ann

teddylee.gray@gmail.com