Kingston, Jamaica — Former Energy Minister Phillip Paulwell has pledged that the People’s National Party (PNP) will empower Jamaicans by democratizing the electricity industry if they secure victory in the next General Election.
During his address at the St Andrew East Central Constituency Conference on Sunday, Paulwell shared the PNP’s ambitious vision. “We are going to democratize the way electricity is done in Jamaica, and we are going to give you the power through a lot of the new technologies, especially solar, to generate your own electricity. Then JPS (Jamaica Public Service Company) can come to you and offer to buy power from you,” Paulwell stated to the enthusiastic crowd of party supporters.
The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) has recently faced significant public criticism, especially after the passing of Hurricane Beryl in July. The restoration timeline post-hurricane and the delivery of hefty August bills to customers—many of whom were without power for much of the billing period—have sparked demands for a review of the JPS’s licence.
Referring to his tenure as energy minister in 2016, Paulwell emphasized the changes he introduced to the 2011 JPS licence, which would have been renewed under a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration. “The only things that I added were, one, to give the Jamaican consumer greater power over how they are treated by JPSCo. Secondly, we recognized the need to separate the accounts of the company because the company has been involved in the generation of electricity, in distribution and transmission, and they were also involved in system planning, what we call dispatch,” Paulwell explained. However, he lamented that these provisions mandated under the 2016 agreement have seen little progress due to the subsequent change in government.
He firmly asserted that many benefits outlined in the amended JPS licence, aimed at empowering the people, remain unrealized. “Many of those provisions that were put in the JPSCo licence to benefit the people are still not yet being put in force, and this is one of the things we have to do when we get back into power,” Paulwell concluded.
As the nation approaches the next General Election, Paulwell’s vision of an empowered, solar-driven Jamaica may become a focal point for voters hoping to see significant changes in the energy sector.
