John Myers Jr., Staff Reporter
THE 21,000 customers who were overbilled by the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) last November should know today how and when they will be compensated as the light-and-power company is expected to have sorted out a computer problem that has been preventing it from effecting the changes to customers' accounts.
J. Paul Morgan, director-general of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), said the JPS had failed to meet the June 30 deadline but said this was due to the company experiencing a computer glitch.
"They came to us and outlined some problems that they were having in terms of the actual implementation," he said. "In some of the computer runs (tests) that they were doing some of the accounts that came up didn't fit the profile (the formula recommended by the OUR) ... so we had to vary the formula a little bit."
The JPS was directed in January to provide the report on the 21,000 accounts that were found to be faulty, following widespread complaints from customers of receiving unusually high bills in November last year, two months after Hurricane Ivan. Based on investigations into the problem by the OUR, the JPS was found to be at fault in reading customers' electricity meters.
The OUR then gave the light-and-power company until the end of February to submit the report on the affected customers' accounts.
The JPS was also mandated to provide recommendations on how it intended to compensate the affected customers. This was done by the JPS in March, but was rejected by the OUR, which was concerned that the recommended methodology would result in some customers being over-compensated and others under-compensated.
