Government To Pay 20 Per Cent Of Electricity Bill For Low-Income Households

More than 450,000 low- and middle-income households, consuming up to 200 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per month, will receive a 20 per cent contribution towards their bill payments over the next four months, under the Government’s proposed We CARE Energy Co-Pay Programme.

This is expected to largely benefit persons earning smaller incomes, including vendors, security guards, housekeepers, household workers, bartenders, waiters, handymen, many occupations in the informal economy and hard-working Jamaicans on minimum wage or just above.

Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr. the Hon. Nigel Clarke, who made the announcement, said the programme, expected to cost approximately $2 billion, is being implemented as a temporary intervention to cushion the impact of higher electricity prices on the most vulnerable.

These increases have been sparked by hikes in global oil prices, largely fuelled by the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Consequently, Dr. Clarke said the intervention, which forms part of an overall $3.7-billion package of social assistance support, will be extended to prepaid and postpaid Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) customers between April and July.

He was delivering the closing presentation in the 2022/23 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday (March 22).

Dr. Clarke noted that approximately 457,786 largely low-income households, representing 81 per cent of the JPS’s retail base of 563,451, will benefit from the intervention.

He indicated that the target beneficiaries will also include some “middle” bracket customers who, “while not particularly associated with lower incomes, [are] not associated with higher income either”.

Dr. Clarke also advised that prepaid JPS customers who pay in advance for small amounts of electricity at a time will receive bonus credit from the government representing, 20 per cent of the top-up sum purchased.

“We are concerned that [for] those on lower incomes… more and more of their income is consumed by electricity consumption… at this time. So, when we construct social-assistance policies to respond to times like these, we wish to target lower income groups.

It is only morally right that the proceeds of social-assistance resources go to these persons first,” he maintained.

Meanwhile, Dr. Clarke informed the House that the Government, through the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), has been regularising communities where unauthorised electricity was “once the norm”.

He said these include Maverley, Tower Hill, Cassava Piece, Stand Pipe, August Town, Majesty Gardens, Grants Pen, in Kingston; Homestead, St. Catherine; Canaan Heights, Clarendon; Steer Town, St. Ann; and Copperwood, Lilliput and Granville, in St. James.

Dr. Clarke pointed out that these communities “all have new JPS customers on the prepaid modality”.