THE EDITOR, Madam:
In January 2005 I wrote to the Office of Utilities Regulation asking for an independent audit to be done on the meter reading/billing cycle of the JPSCo. Ltd because of the problems consumers were experiencing in dealing with this company. One year and one month later there has been no audit, no meter testing, nothing - and consumers continue to suffer.
The guaranteed service standards 2004-2009 that govern the relationship between the Jamaica Public Service Company Ltd., The National Water Commission and Consumer provides financial redress for a number of breaches of agreed performance standards and consumer rights. This is good, but not sufficient, albeit we continue to encourage consumers to use this avenue in pressuring the utilities to act fairly.
Guaranteed service measures as currently exist do not capture the problems of faulty meters, or billing or the destruction of consumers' equipment due to the frequent intermittent disruption of electricity. The disconnection of consumer service despite the fact that they do not owe the utility, demonstrates the continuing disrespect that particularly the JPSCo exhibits.
Late last year the National Consumers' League purchased from off the shelves and tested samples of bottled water being sold on our market. The result showed that 50 per cent of the water tested was not suitable for human consumption. We wrote to the Bureau of Standards requesting that all the bottled water being offered for sale on our market be tested to ensure consumer safety. Nothing seems to have happened and consumers continue to suffer.
We have pleaded with the powers to ratify the Cartagena protocol as a first step so that genetically modified foods can be identified and labelled, ensuring the right of consumers to know what we are consuming. Nothing has happened, except that we continue to eat-up, and we and our offsprings will suffer the consequences later, "none shall escape". However, Belarus has just decreed that GM Foods must be labelled now, and has forbidden the production of children's food prepared using genetically modified organisms.
Blocks of funds provided as grants to some lending agencies are being loaned to the needy at one per cent per week, and considered concessionary.
We must provide legal and official avenues for people within the communities to get involved in economic activities to look after themselves and their families. For a small/micro business to pay 70 per cent on the money they borrow is way too much.
Consumers continue to suffer, and as a voluntary consumer organisation we feel impotent, because funding to implement projects that would force major changes in the life of consumers and the country, gets little, if any support, once more than tinkering is required. There are always some criteria one cannot meet, barriers that seem to be erected even as you speak. We grapple with measures to assist in bringing about the necessary changes, but after coming up with solutions, they cannot be lifted off the paper, due to lack of funding.
I am, etc.,
CARLTON STEWART
National Consumers' League
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