Dear Editor,
There is a saying that if you are torturing someone by tying them to a stake in the hot sun and they cry out for water, and you deliver it, next they will demand an umbrella.
Jamaica Public Service Company’s (JPS)CEO Kelly Tomblin has set standards in reliable power generation that dwarfs all her predecessors, yet at the least little hiccup we chastise and abuse her and the company, even though we have come a long way.
When Moses, the great deliverer, took the children of Israel out of slavery, within days many of them bawled to return to the “luxuries” they enjoyed in Egypt. We have all forgotten the constant blackouts this country suffered before the diminutive Kelly Tomblin took over. We have all forgotten the fact that Mirant used tiny Jamaica’s electricity consumers to rescue its entire company from bankruptcy in the United States. If this petite woman was our first female prime minister, do you think she would be running and hiding from the press? Tomblin faces her tribulations head-on and her inability to explain technical matters doesn’t negate the fact that she has revolutionised reliable power generation in this country. She still refuses to cut power to hospitals, no matter how much they owe.
In the face of massive theft and corruption, a recent Caribbean Policy Research Institute study showed that 150,000 Jamaicans steal electricity and the JPS loses approximately 25 per cent of electricity it generates, and of that 60 per cent is stolen.
If six men are carrying a casket and one faints, if the other five are unable to manage the load the dead body will be spilled on the ground. Of course, the power outage is far more complex than that, but if the JPS had a system that isolated Bogue customers from Hunt’s Bay and Old Harbour Bay customers then the additional load wouldn’t shut down the entire island; only sections of the country would lose power when you had such a massive short-circuit or fault, and the rest of the generating units would attempt to take up the additional load. It doesn’t require Einstein to understand this, but someone more technically competent should be sitting beside this great CEO to do so.
Mark Clarke
Siloah PO, St Elizabeth
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com
There is a saying that if you are torturing someone by tying them to a stake in the hot sun and they cry out for water, and you deliver it, next they will demand an umbrella.
Jamaica Public Service Company’s (JPS)CEO Kelly Tomblin has set standards in reliable power generation that dwarfs all her predecessors, yet at the least little hiccup we chastise and abuse her and the company, even though we have come a long way.
When Moses, the great deliverer, took the children of Israel out of slavery, within days many of them bawled to return to the “luxuries” they enjoyed in Egypt. We have all forgotten the constant blackouts this country suffered before the diminutive Kelly Tomblin took over. We have all forgotten the fact that Mirant used tiny Jamaica’s electricity consumers to rescue its entire company from bankruptcy in the United States. If this petite woman was our first female prime minister, do you think she would be running and hiding from the press? Tomblin faces her tribulations head-on and her inability to explain technical matters doesn’t negate the fact that she has revolutionised reliable power generation in this country. She still refuses to cut power to hospitals, no matter how much they owe.
In the face of massive theft and corruption, a recent Caribbean Policy Research Institute study showed that 150,000 Jamaicans steal electricity and the JPS loses approximately 25 per cent of electricity it generates, and of that 60 per cent is stolen.
If six men are carrying a casket and one faints, if the other five are unable to manage the load the dead body will be spilled on the ground. Of course, the power outage is far more complex than that, but if the JPS had a system that isolated Bogue customers from Hunt’s Bay and Old Harbour Bay customers then the additional load wouldn’t shut down the entire island; only sections of the country would lose power when you had such a massive short-circuit or fault, and the rest of the generating units would attempt to take up the additional load. It doesn’t require Einstein to understand this, but someone more technically competent should be sitting beside this great CEO to do so.
Mark Clarke
Siloah PO, St Elizabeth
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com