By
Tony Gambrill
Jamaica Observer Reporter
Kingston/Caribbean
sea
Petroleumworld.com
02 26 06
"HE
venido a cambiar su bombillo." This is probably what a
resident of Paradise in eastern Kingston heard one morning last
week when she, very cautiously, opened her front door.
Having
heard as a little girl how a Cuban Ambassador had tried to influence
the outcome of our l979 election in favour of Michael Manley's
People's National Party (PNP) , she must have soon come to the
conclusion that Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology
Phillip Paulwell had already begun his re-election campaign.
Well,
maybe he has. Thirty Cuban light bulb changers are supposed
to have been going around his Eastern Kingston and Port Royal
constituency distributing 30,000 FREE low-wattage bulbs meant
to replace the residents' standard incandescent bulbs.
In
case these gentlemen (and ladies?) encountered language difficulties
Minister Paulwell's office has been providing presumably Spanish-speaking
assistant light bulb changers. They no doubt also have the unenviable
task of trying to part the residents from their old bulbs because
the minister wants them symbolically destroyed.
"Por favor deme su bombillo."
According
to my calculations we'll be witnessing $800,000 worth of perfectly
serviceable bulbs being demolished in a grand energy-saving
spectacular to be staged at the PJ Patterson Stadium in Trelawny
during the 2007 World Cup Cricket extravagantza (sic).
Being
able to unscrew a light bulb may be the least of the skills
this 60-strong team will need to bring into play. It may well
be that the residents of eastern Kingston and Port Royal have
been tardy in paying their electricity bills and possibly a
few are even illegally-connected.
With
illegal connections costing the JPS - and consequently you and
I - $2.6-billion a year, there just have to be some folks in
the area contributing to that shortfall. Even the minister at
his press conference said he hoped that the scheme would also
assist in "regularising" electricity offtake.
Certainly
the JPS would like that and even if this ambitious expectation
isn't achieved at least the low-wattage bulbs will use less
power. One might have thought both possibilities would have
pleased JPS CEO Charles Mathews, but he didn't look too cheerful
in the press conference photos that appeared in both morning
dailies. Perhaps it was the eventual prospect of lower light
bills wouldn't help his bottom line.
If
you missed the newspaper reports on Thursday, February l6, there
were some more fascinating details that caught my attention.
The most alarming was the mention in that other morning daily
that the bulbs cost US$2 million, that's US$67 or J$4,400 each.
Considering
that a 40-watt light bulb in Jamaica costs around $27 this would
be an alarming prospect. One can only assume it was a slip of
a reporter's ballpoint and he actually meant J$2 million which
would still bring the bulbs out at $67 each for an eight-watt
fluorescent bulb (which, incidentally, is comparable in illuminations
to a 40-watt incandescent bulb).
The
benefit, however, is that the minister says the bulbs will last
l0,000 hours or about seven years if they are burning an average
of four hours a day. Worth their premium price no doubt.
Jamaica
which spends US$1.2 billion each year on oil could use all the
help it can get to reduce this bill; the Cuban Ministry of Basic
Industries recently estimated that had the new bulbs been installed
in Havana last June, the Cuban capital would have had 20 per
cent fewer of the lengthy power outages that it suffered. Which
is what all the excitement is about - Cuba's electricity system
is in crisis to the extent of causing social unrest.
"Estos
bombillos Cubanos les ahorraran dinero."
We
might be getting some social unrest ourselves. In a couple of
months all 60 light bulb changers, in conjunction with the JPS,
will be returning to check how much the lucky recipients have
saved on their electricity bills. Don't hold your breath, folks,
because with oil prices going through the roof again the fuel
surcharge might wipe out the savings.
But
don't knock fluorescent bulbs, the experts say, as they could
save over ten per cent of our light bills and, furthermore,
they produce lower carbon dioxide emissions than our standard
bulbs, a useful contribution in the war against global warming.
There's nothing new about fluorescent light bulbs; the European
electronic giant Philips has been making them for 20 years.
In fact, it was their plant in China that supplied the Cubans.
The
only puzzle is why, if Cuba is in crisis, did they give us 30,000
bulbs? Is it a clue that Cuba is once more behind the PNP's
electioneering?
Or
is it merely to give Minister Paulwell's constituents a brighter,
cheaper future? I mean, after all, he could have come back from
his meeting in Havana last December empty-handed, so to speak,
except for a bottle of Havana Club, a box of Cohibas and a nubile
jinetera.
