THE EDITOR, Sir:

The Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has advertised for an officer to, among other things, "plan and deliver a programme of public relations and public education activities designed to create a positive public image of the OUR".

It is also seeking a chief legal counsel.

To many consumers, the OUR has long engaged more in public relations than in proper regulation of the utility companies. Now, it wants a specialist spin doctor to, in the jargon of the day, 'put lipstick on a pig'.

Lost options

I have been a utility customer for 50 years. In spite of, or because of, and under the watch of the OUR, consumers have within the last two years lost over 90 per cent of the options which they once enjoyed, of paying their bills without paying a fee. I challenge the OUR to deny this.

Consumers must by now have paid hundreds of millions of dollars and will eventually pay billions of dollars and more as fees for paying their bills - quite unnecessarily and improperly. This is the legacy of the OUR.

Minister Clive Mullings when in Opposition was very critical of the above policy, although he barked up the wrong tree by blaming the bill collecting agents instead of the utility companies and the OUR.

He is now in a position to 'repair the breach'. There is widespread disquiet about the operation of the OUR.

Comprehensive review

I would urge the minister to ensure that a comprehensive evaluation and performance audit of the OUR be conducted to determine if it should be abolished or whether it can be reconfigured and rehabilitated.

I also suggest that, until this is done, a moratorium should be placed on the recruitment of any new staff whatsoever.

Consumers should be given an opportunity to contribute to any review of the OUR.

The Jamaican public requires performances - not propaganda or public relations - from the OUR.

At present, it is a discredited body. It is a dead albatross around the neck of the Jamaican consumer.

Plastic surgery, an image massage or a makeover cannot help. Radical intervention is needed.

I am, etc.,

BERESFORD HAY

P.O. Box 1191

Kingston 8