Riverton residents left in the dark by frequent power cuts

Residents of Riverton City in Kingston 11 said their corners have been literally dark over the last six weeks due to frequent power outages from the Jamaica Public Service (JPS).

Staging a peaceful demonstration at the entrance of their community on Spanish Town Road yesterday, the placard-bearing residents said they are fed up.

"Every day for the past six weeks, they (JPS) cut off the light. I can remember for about five days I did not have light in my house day and night. I am talking about people who are doing little businesses to make a living and pay their bills and when you look, their products get stale and rotten. So how can we pay our bills?" a resident, Morris Heslop, said.

As a result, Heslop said many of the community's children have been unable to access online classes.

"I have spoken to some of the JPS workers and one of them told me that the people who have a contract with them have to suffer with who stealing light. I don't business with that because I am paying my bills. Our bills come to the same amount even though the current is out every day and that cannot be right," he added.

Can't even eat overnight food

Another resident said the frequent power outages cause food issues.

"We sell ice cream and other stuff for a living and right now if yuh look in the fridge, the ice cream turn soup. We can't even eat overnight food or 'Sunday Monday' again because that spoil too. War is going on and the place is dark. There are children here with asthma and when the houses get too hot, they become sick," she said.

Audrey Williams, JPS' media and public relations manager, said the power outages are caused by an overloading caused by electricity theft.

"The problem is that the Riverton City area has a very high level of electricity theft and in fact it is about 90 per cent. By overloading the system with illegal connections and so on, it is causing the system to short out. We are supposed to be delivering a particular amount of current to the community based on the customers that we have. But when you have persons tapping on with illegal connections, and when this happens, there are going to be outages because things are shorting out," she said.

Williams said the utility company is more than willing to work with the residents to rectify the situation.

"We have been reaching out to people and we want to have a proper resolution to the situation. We want people to come on board and do all the things that are necessary to become customers. It's not hard to become a customer either and we are willing to meet with the residents and discuss this," she added.