The other day I was sitting in a taxi nibbling on a potato wedge when a man came beside me grumbling about his recent electricity bill. “It’s a shiam we don’t ave anada one.” I was curious but afraid of asking him about the cause of his frustration. He was grinding his teeth, piercing the back of the driver’s seat with his hardly less than furious glare and tapping his fingers frantically on the remaining seat between us.

I thought I felt the temperature in the car increase noticeably but the other gentleman in the front passenger seat seemed not at all bothered by all this. Against my better judgement I pried. He said that he was tired of the dishonesty that exists among the utility company in question. He was contemplating going back to the dark ages and terminating his account with them. He and his son live together and are almost never home. He leaves for work at 7am and leaves his son with a neighbour who operates a day care centre with over twenty other children. He does not own any additional energy consuming appliances. He returns home and collects his son in the evenings and is asleep most nights by 9pm. However his electricity bill is higher –much higher than his neighbour’s. Unbelievable… believe it. I could empathize with him on that issue because he is not alone in that dilemma. JPS has been robbing us left right and centre. There is no ‘Ifs’, ‘but’, or ‘maybes’ about it and by us I mean the honest taxing paying, bill paying Jamaican public. Not the owners of big business and mega store because obviously that is a requirement to get free light these days.

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