OPPOSITION Leader Mark Golding on Thursday poured cold water on the Government’s plan to allocate $1 billion in the 2025-26 budget to assist the first 20,000 customers who sign up with Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) for prepaid electricity, saying that the allotment is not enough to make the level of impact needed.

“At $50,000 per household this will only extend to 20,000 households, that is about 300 households per constituency. That will barely scratch the surface,” Golding said as he hammered the Government’s energy policy execution as weak in his 2025/26 budget presentation in the House of Representatives.

Pointing out that energy impacts every other sector of the economy, Golding said electricity prices in Jamaica are too high and thus undermine the competitiveness of the island’s economy and hurt consumers.

He said when the People’s National Party (PNP) left office in 2016 the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour (kWh) was US$0.26 cents, but t is now over US$0.40 cents.

“The price has just about doubled under this Government,” he charged, and scolded the Government for issuing only one request for proposals (RFPs) for additional renewable energy over the nine years it has been in office.

He vowed that a future PNP Government “will prioritise achieving the renewable energy target of 33 per cent by 2030” and “issue utility-scale RFPs every two to three years to achieve our renewable energy target”.

Addressing the burning issue of electricity theft, Golding said it poses a major problem for the economic viability of the electricity system, and exposes many families to legal and fire risks.

He said that for some time now, including in his budget presentation in March last year, he called for the Government to get behind a massive drive to assist informal consumers of electricity to get regularised and become lawful customers of JPS.

“In 2014 we did a pilot in several communities, and I urge the Government to re-examine the outcomes of that pilot so that as many people as possible can become lawful customers on the grid,” the Opposition leader said.

He said he acknowledged the effort announced last week Tuesday by Finance Minister Fayval Williams to get more people on the grid, but argued that the $1 billion is insufficient as approximately 300,000 households need to be formalised.

“Our plan for this important activity is more extensive. We see it as a crucial socio-economic imperative to decriminalise the electricity consumption of the many Jamaicans who cannot afford to undertake the process of regularisation on their own. We are determined to empower these otherwise upstanding citizens to become lawful customers of the utility,” Golding said.