Among the many tortures that the citizens of the Caribbean have to endure during the summer, high electricity bills are the worst and least explained.
One of the leaders of the pack in the highest power bills in the Caribbean must be the Toronto Stock Exchange listed Caribbean Utilities Company of the Cayman Islands. Sorely and desperately in need of oversight and change, but none is forthcoming. Here, there are no brave moves such as a non-renewal of their license to be expected like the Asian owned, oxymoron named, Jamaica Public Service as happened recently by the Jamaican government.
In 2021 CUC gave itself a score of 8 out of 17 countries surveyed in the restrictive 800 kWh residential bracket without naming the other countries.That press release was parroted by several media outlets.The America Solar Energy Society declared in 2022 that a Caribbean home would require 500 kWh. That very restrictive and select self-assessment by CUC creates more doubt than clarification. All numbers can be manipulated to serve whomever. In that same report CUC had the lowest ranking for solar savings among the UK Overseas Territories at $760 while the highest,Montserrat, had savings of $2,210.
The 2024 Caribbean Association of Electric Utilities or CARILEC report on monthly residential bills for 400kWh has CUC in the top ten of twenty two Caribbean providers closely banded together between US$140-180. CUC is correct that they do not have the highest electricity rates in the Caribbean and have put forward a profusion of explanations as to why this is their predicament. Presumably the other Caribbean providers will have the selfsame press releases.
Little, isolated, underdeveloped Belize has the fourth lowest electricity rate in the same report. Most of the lowest rate countries receive government subsidies.
While this is a mostly unknown word in the Third World or Caribbean, subsidies are a necessary part of the outside world and given our aspirations, it must now be a part of the Caribbean. If governments have been unable to fix the punishing electricity bills that burden their voters while restricting upward mobility, there must be change and change now.
Yes, bigwigs may have to cut back on their junkets or their vanity projects if they fail the mandate of citizens chained to incomparable worst part of their cost of living.
Failing that they may have to stretch their imagination to offshore oil exploration like Guyana and Jamaica. In a pioneer move Guyana distributed 100,000 of their local currency from their newly producing oil wealth last year to every citizen. Every Caribbean politician must be squirming in his seat as their populace grows smarter at the ballot box.
Who feels it knows it.
Notes
**Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.**