Jamaican problems with electricity

Hello ecebloggers,

As some of you may know my wife and I were on a two week vacation in Negril, Jamaica. This beautiful island has many things to offer: sea, landscape, cuisine, culture… There isn’t a person in the world who hasn’t heard of Bob Marley and The Wailers. Although there’s a lot to write about Jamaica (tourism, music, cuisine…) I’m gonna write about something else that caught my attention.

Because of high poverty people struggle to survive day by day (but they still keep smiling:) ). In such a world some thing’s that we take for granted, like electricity, are luxury and not all the people can afford it. The high price of electricity comes from the main source to generate it: oil.

But people need electricity in their everyday lives, so they get it for “free” (see pictures below).

All the connections, except maybe two, are illegal, or “free”. If you are in a touristic place, like Negril, Ocho Rios or Montego Bay you wouldn’t see these so often. But if you go inside the country these connections are common. Besides being illegal, these connections add additional weight to the pole and create danger for the surrounding area. When we were traveling in the country one of the poles crashed on the road. Luckly nobody was there.

Jamaica is loosing a lot of money because of the illegal electrical connections. Their government is trying to reach to the people and address the problem (see picture below).

These billboards can be seen throughout the country. In order to solve this problem Jamaican government is making a lot of effort to lower the cost of electricity by making their system more efficient and using different fuel to produce electricity.

I hope that Jamaica will find a solution for the problem.

Have a good one,

Nemanja Memarovic