PRIME Minister Dr Andrew Holness, chair of the National Disaster Risk Management Council, says the Government will be coming to the rescue of telecommunications providers, with legislation carrying harsher penalties for criminals who prey on critical infrastructure.

Addressing the island’s disaster response agencies during a meeting of the council on Wednesday, the prime minister said the move is part of resolving the “gaps” identified following the passage of Hurricane Beryl last July.

Noting that the island’s telecommunications providers have served the country well, the prime minister said the entities remain “vulnerable to criminal activity, particularly the theft of fuel, generators, copper and fibre and sometimes even the repeaters [electronic device that receives a signal and retransmits it]”.

“I know they have invested heavily in trying to secure the equipment that keeps us running, but I think that the Government must now create special legislation to place harsher penalties on those persons who prey upon these critical infrastructure,” Holness told the council meeting.

“Think about it, someone goes and steals 100 gallons of fuel, that repeater cell site goes down, the person who steals probably sells that fuel at half price, but everybody else is without. The commerce that doesn’t get to go through, somebody having an emergency [gets no help], that one thief would have put an entire community at risk, and we cannot treat it as ‘oh, he just stole some fuel’,” the prime minister stated.

Said Holness to applause: “This act is not stealing from the telecommunications company, he is stealing from you, he is taking away your security and your safety, it is a criminal act against a public service and the level of punishment for that should be stronger for a greater deterrent effect. And so we are examining the legislation to improve that.”

In the wake of Hurricane Beryl which sideswiped the island on July 3 last year leaving destruction in its wake, the island’s telecommunications giants Flow Jamaica and Digicel complained that repeated theft and vandalism of their equipment interfered significantly with restoration efforts.

In 2021, amid a spate of cable theft that inconvenienced thousands of Flow Jamaica customers, Flow Jamaica vice-president and General Manager Stephen Price suggested that deliberate damage to telecommunication apparatus be classified as domestic terrorism.

In 2022, Digicel and Flow jointly said the theft of copper and fibre-optic cable was costing a combined total of over $400 million to replace them and restore service annually.

In the meantime, Holness said, while Jamaica was spared the worst in Hurricane Beryl, the gaps observed where the island’s utilities were concerned must be addressed.

“We must improve the resilience of our utilities. The Jamaica Public Service (JPS) must undertake a comprehensive review of its distribution and replace those compromised and broken poles and, as quickly as possible, replace those that are needed to be replaced with concrete poles,” he said.

“I know they have started that work, there is a capital allocation for that, and that work must proceed right throughout the year with great speed and alacrity, so that, God forbid, there is any other disaster to come, we are not without electricity in those areas for any extended period of time. I know the JPS is addressing that, but we must hold them to account,” the prime minister said.

Turning to the National Water Commission (NWC), Holness said the Government has developed a two-pronged strategy to keep customers supplied in the event of a disaster, which is to include solarisation of some plants and the installation of generators at others.

“As we examined the operations of the NWC, clearly, except for gravity-fed systems, once the electricity is out then the entire country would be out of water. So the NWC has to develop independent power sources — it has to have its own back-up capability — and so the Government has started work towards ensuring that in the critical areas for supply and distribution, that those pumping stations will have back-up generators — that’s a long-term objective but we are going to ensure that we at least have some short-term capabilities,” he said.

After Hurricane Beryl on July 3 last year, it was August 29 before JPS announced that it had completed the restoration of electricity to thousands of customers who had lost supply as a result of the category four hurricane.

The NWC on July 4 that year indicated that 70 per cent of its customer base was without water. By July 21, it reported that 90 per cent of customers had been restored. By August 5 that percentage moved to 98.

And the Administration on Wednesday boasted that the country’s National Natural Disaster Risk Financing Policy (NNDRFP) cushion stands at approximately $130.6 billion in terms of coverage.

“How much we can draw down on that will depend on the severity of the disaster… the commitment of this Government is to continue strengthening our NNDRFP and fill in any gaps we have,” Finance Minister Fayval Williams emphasised.

For the hurricane season which runs from June 1 to November 30 each year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecasted up to 19 named storms, with up to five potentially becoming hurricanes.

In this file photo, telecoms cables seized by police officers in Christiana, Manchester during an arrest.