From surviving Hurricane Melissa, living for months without electricity and now trying to rebuild amid rising cost of living, including juggling increasing fuel prices brought on by the war in the Middle East, residents of Westmoreland are questioning whether their suffering will ever end.

The latest ex-refinery costs from Petrojam indicated another increase at the pumps for motorists, with both grades of gasoline up by $4.50 — pushing 90-octane to $188.57 per litre and 87-octane to $181.13.

As motorists pulled up to the gas pumps in the parish last Thursday, some bemoaned the increase in prices, noting that they’re still dealing with the aftermath of the Category 5 hurricane, only to be hit by another blow.

“[Hurricane] Melissa mash me up and now gas a mash me up bad,” said one taxi operator.

He said he lost the roof of his home during the storm, along with a small shop he operated as a side hustle, and is now struggling to make ends meet. He told the Jamaica Observer that he once spent about $3,500 on petrol per day to operate his taxi, but that cost has risen to at least $5,000, pushing his weekly fuel bill to more than $20,000.

“It’s the same fare me a collect,” the cabbie said. “[Cost of] tyre raise; one of my tyres was $10,000, now it is $12,000-plus, so everything — battery — everything gone up. It hard, but you have to gwaan because we can’t sit down. It’s tight; we want a fare increase badly,” he appealed.

A resident of Cave, David Israel, said he is not only facing increases at the pumps but also hefty costs to rewire his house following the passage of the hurricane.

“We have to hire electricians, and those electricians, after the storm, their prices are also going high. So everything is compounding since Melissa, and if you’re really not self-motivated and have a driven spirit to just get up back on your feet and move and not being hopeless, it will break your spirit,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“Everything just compounds, it’s one after the other,” he said, with slight frustration, adding that, despite the challenges, he remains resilient.

A teacher in Westmoreland said he has resorted to finding creative ways of saving on fuel.

“We just have to ration wherever we go, carpool, where possible, and basically walk or tan a me yard, and it’s increasingly the last part — tan a me yard,” he said.

He shared that in just two days he spent $7,000 on petrol, noting that the same petrol spend would usually last him the entire week.

“It’s tactical choices — if we don’t absolutely have to go there, we don’t go there, or [we] walk, because even if we take taxi, that’s still at a cost,” he explained.

With work-from-home arrangements being considered, he said he would welcome the move, but noted that online learning would be a difficult task and would only transfer the cost increases from one area to the next.

“My light bill has gone up every month by 50 per cent, so I am dreading to see what the next bill will be like. If it’s work from home, we have to be careful how we do that, but I can understand the need to restrict general road movement,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Another resident of Cave, who identified herself as Mrs James, said it would generally cost $19,000 to operate her generator for one week, a price she is happy she won’t have to pay now that her electricity has returned. However, she bemoaned that she has already been billed for the two weeks of electricity she’s used since the service was restored.

“It wasn’t an easy task, still grateful for the current [electricity] that we get back, but I never expected a light bill so soon. The light bill was like $6,800 just for two weeks, and it’s not nice knowing that we’re working with minimum wage to pay the light bill, water bill, and send the kids back to school,” she said, adding that she also lost her business and some animals due to the storm.

“We are just hopeful that some better days are coming, but, to me, it just seems like it’s getting worse than how we expect it,” she said.

For Delpert Rodney, his struggle was not rising gas prices but a fire that wiped out what little he had managed to salvage after the hurricane. The haberdashery owner in Belmont said his entire store was destroyed during the storm, and the few items he managed to save were stored in the back room of a temporary structure. However, that storeroom was destroyed by fire last Thursday.

“We were at ground zero after Hurricane Melissa, and this happened. It’s really heartbreaking right now,” he told the Sunday Observer. He said business was decent after the storm and he was just starting to recover, only to be hit with a new challenge.

“From fire, there is nothing to be salvaged now. We just have to move on and pray,” he reasoned.

“I’m of the view that once you don’t give up, there is always room for going forward. Once you give up, then everything is dead, but once you keep trying and putting the pieces back together, you will be good,” he said.

Construction workers in Westmoreland fix the roof of an establishment that was destroyed during the passage of Hurricane Melissa.

ISRAEL…everything just compounds. It’s one after the other

Motorists in Westmoreland filling their tanks at a gas station in the parish last Thursday when gas prices went up by $4.50 for both 87 and 90 petrol.