FIVE electricians listed by the Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology as certified, are calling for upper-class residents and big businesses to be exposed for electricity theft.

In an interview with the Jamaica Observer, the electricians lamented that inner-city residents were frequently highlighted for cheating the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) Company, while when upper-class people do the same on a larger scale, they are spared.

Christopher Dell, an inspector in Westmoreland, told the Sunday Observer that there were enterprises exploiting the utility company.

“The big business people dem are stealing, but they are stealing undercover. There are different types of stealing — in the inner-city or the ghetto, the average person, what they do is they take a dry stick with a little nail, and they use that to hitch a piece of wire on a JPS wire. They are throwing up the wires, and it is plain to see. The regular persons don’t need an electrician to do certain work,” he said.

“The big business people now, they get electricians to steal light. It gets kinda tricky, technical and it becomes sophisticated. This is Jamaica… the corruption don’t stop. It just continues and continues. This is happening right across Jamaica, and it has been happening for a while.”

Dell, who worked as an electrical investigator for the JPS, said his team busted an establishment in the hospitality industry some years ago.

“Years ago we caught a big hotel stealing light. We went on a big raid, and we had persons from JPS all the way from Kingston and drive all the way to Negril. We went and caught these people stealing light. and they were back-billed millions of dollars,” Dell told the Sunday Observer.

In 2020, a JPS crew carrying out meter investigations found a device buried in the back wall of a large, five-bedroom house in Smokeyvale, St Andrew, while the meter serving the premises showed clear signs of tampering.

The stolen power was being used to power a jacuzzi, two air conditioning units, four televisions, one deep freezer, a water cooler, a 40-gallon water heater, clothes dryer, dishwasher and a variety of other appliances. The customer was back-billed for over $4.5 million.

This was two years after the company invested $2 billion in smart meter technology as part of its anti-theft strategies.

Dell added: “That is not going to change no time soon [as] people are stealing light every day. And when I say people, I mean that millions of people are stealing light from JPS. This is something that is here and we’re going to have to put some measures in place to cap off this type of behaviour. People are stealing, and that’s just how it is. You have all classes of people stealing light from JPS — high class, middle class, all classes.”

Winsome Callum, JPS’s head of corporate communications, told the Sunday Observer that JPS’s efforts to fight theft are not limited to any area or group.

“Electricity theft is widespread, and can be found across all socio-economic groups and geographical areas. Every day, JPS workers are engaged in account audits, meter investigations and the removal of illegal ‘throw-up’ lines. The company carried out over 80,000 account audits among metered customers in 2021. Over 5,500 irregularities were found among these customers, who were stealing electricity through line-taps, meter bypasses, and meter tampering. Approximately 200 of these were persons stealing using very sophisticated devices.

“In 2021, JPS removed over 60,000 illegal throw-up lines among persons who have no contract with JPS. Several of them were repeat offenders. About 70 persons were arrested by the police for electricity theft in 2021. In many cases, customers who are found with sophisticated methods of stealing choose to immediately regularise and work out payment arrangements with JPS. These persons do not necessarily face prosecution through the court system.”

But Everton Duncan, who operates in St Andrew, gave the example of a business paying $1 million per month for electricity and not being suspected of theft because that is considered a hefty charge.

“They may be paying that but is actually using around $1.5 million worth of electricity for the period. Those people are cunning [and] JPS might not pick it up because, at the end of the day, they are still paying $1 million. Unless you do an audit, you won’t be able to pick it up based on the volume that they’re really using,” he said.

“I know of incidents like those. Some upper class people, they take it [illegal electricity] at night; they don’t use it during the days. In their eyes, it is to conserve but they are actually stealing. They might be less in terms of quantity and the amount of them stealing, but they take a whole lot. These people use some real high-tech things. The little man just put up a little wire. We see the small man because we can see the wire.”

Duncan said some inspectors turn a blind eye.

“Some of them take bribes and overlook certain things,” he said.

Meanwhile, Victor Hendricks, an electrician in St Elizabeth, agreed that business people were hiring skilled electricians so they can inconspicuously steal electricity.

“I have recognised that when someone fails to pay their electrical bill and the electricity is disconnected for a period of time, or if someone passes away, some business people swap the meters because, after a period of time, nobody reads that meter again. They get technicians to put that out-of-service meter into their meter box, so that meter is not going on record for payment. Now that JPS has the digital meters that they can turn off with remotes, that will help the situation,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Hendricks said that when these things go unnoticed, paying customers feel the brunt.

“If I get a $200,000 bill for my little house, what is my income to pay that off? When them cut it off and I am totally embarrassed, maybe I am tempted to steal light. Bills that I hear people getting, it is totally impossible for them to use that. The more people steal electricity, the more the regular customer pays. Consumers on a whole should be more vigilant and report electricity theft, but because people nah [don’t have] fi ask question fi kill yuh nowadays, we keep tight-lipped.”

Devon Powell, based in St Catherine, also said electricity theft is all over the island.

“It’s not like one time when it was in corporate areas. It is all over the country now. Anywhere there is access to electricity, people tend to climb the poles. Listen, the big business people that steal electricity, they have all kinds of sophisticated ways of stealing electricity. When they steal electricity and you do a comparison to what a little man might steal, they are stealing a lot more.”

Powell recalled: “Some time ago, one big business said an electrician put in a US$30,000 device on his premises so he can steal electricity without JPS being aware of it.”

He criticised electricians who partake in those illegal activities.

“Some of them are probably naïve and might be persuaded by whatever means and do these illegal things. I hope, going forward, that things will work better and we will get some good, honest people in the system – people who are just out to give good service. [I hope we get] some type of intervention where people understand that if you use the energy, you will have to pay.

“Those people are mainly people who operate businesses and have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for electricity because they use security equipment, and usually, it’s businesses with a lot of refrigerators. They tend to want to steal electricity.”