JAMAICA | Water Hike Faces Wall of Opposition: Hayles, Business and Consumer Groups Urge OUR to Turn Off NWC’s 51% Tap

The Opposition, small business and consumer advocates want the regulator to reject the National Water Commission’s bid outright. Commerce, tourism and young entrepreneurs want hard answers first. The Government insists decades of under-investment leave it no choice.

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica — The National Water Commission (NWC) wants Jamaicans to pay 51 per cent more for water. A growing front of political, business and consumer voices wants the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) to tell the utility to fix its pipes first.

Within 48 hours of the application becoming public, the Opposition People’s National Party, the Small Business Association of Jamaica (SBAJ) and the Consumers Intervention of Jamaica (CIJ) had each called on the regulator to reject it.

The Jamaica Chamber of Commerce wants the NWC to find its money elsewhere. The Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) and the Young Entrepreneurs Association of Jamaica (YEA) have stopped short of rejection, but want answers before a single dollar is added to anyone’s bill.

The pushback lands as the OUR decides, within 10 days, whether the application is even fit for review.

The ask

The NWC filed on Friday, October 16, seeking the increase across a five-year tariff period running from 2026/27 to 2030/31. The state-owned utility serves roughly 500,000 customers and was last granted an increase in 2019.

Acting President Kevin Kerr disclosed the filing to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Tuesday, and attached a warning: if the full 51 per cent is not approved, the NWC’s investment plan will have to be revised. Chief Financial Officer Fabian Christie told the committee that customer payments had worsened over time while expenses, energy chief among them, kept climbing.

The timing could hardly have been worse for the utility. The PAC was sitting to examine the Auditor General’s performance audit of the NWC — a document that has handed its critics their ammunition.

“No plan, no increase”

Opposition Spokesperson on Water Ian Hayles, MP, built his case squarely on that audit. It found no master plans behind 17 priority projects valued at $394 billion; no documented basis for ranking capital projects, with no framework expected until March 2028; payables tripling from $10.6 billion in FY2016/17 to $33.2 billion in FY2025/26; capital budgets under-spent every year since FY2019/20; non-revenue water and energy-efficiency targets missed throughout; and four years of audited financial statements not submitted to Parliament.

“The NWC says this increase will fund its investment plan. The Auditor General says there is no master plan and no documented way of choosing projects. Why should the people of Jamaica pay for the mismanagement of their water?” — Ian Hayles, MP

Hayles reminded the country that in his June Sectoral Debate presentation he had called for a national water master plan and a transparent system for selecting projects. He noted then that 85 per cent of the access projects listed by the Minister were in constituencies held by Government MPs, that the Independent Fiscal Commission had flagged $3.3 billion in unspent NWC capital, and that only one of 13 NWC energy-efficiency projects had been completed while the Commission spends an estimated $1 billion a month on electricity. The NWC now cites rising energy costs to justify its request.

The Opposition wants the OUR, the Minister and the NWC Board to consider no increase until the commission tables its outstanding audited accounts and a credible non-revenue water plan. It is also demanding a published national water master plan with quarterly progress reports to Parliament; an end to billing customers who receive no water; a flat rate for pensioners and a social rate for households using up to 2,000 gallons a month; and the consolidation of water governance into a single executive agency.

“After ten years in power, this Government must stop managing announcements, start managing water and stop looking to the Jamaican people for a bailout,” Hayles said.

Small business: fix the leaks first

The SBAJ was blunter still. In a release on Wednesday it described the proposal as deeply insensitive and damaging and formally asked the OUR to reject it. President Garnett Reid called the increase “unconscionable,” arguing that operators still recovering from Hurricane Melissa — some still waiting on insurance payouts — and now battling drought cannot carry it. The NWC, he said, should repair its leaking pipes and tackle its inefficiencies rather than ask the public to pay down its debts.

Reid told The Gleaner that some small businesses are paying between $10,000 and $20,000 for a single truckload of water. He described a shampoo maker forced to cut production, restaurants closing on dry days and hairdressers unable to work, and called for changes to the NWC’s management team.

Consumer advocates are in the same corner. CIJ President Michael Diamond called the request “the height of economic insensitivity” at a time when three of every four gallons the NWC produces earn no revenue. He wants the regulator to protect consumers already coping with erratic supply and trucked water, and to require a transparent recovery plan before any further burden is imposed.

Commerce and tourism want answers

Jamaica Chamber of Commerce President Emile Leiba argued that if the NWC’s needs outstrip its budget, “the better course is to look for funding elsewhere.” Should the OUR approve an increase, he said, it must be phased in and applied equitably, warning that manufacturers who depend on water face a heavy blow to input costs in an inflationary climate.

The JHTA, whose hotels and attractions are among the NWC’s larger commercial customers, accepted that the utility must invest and put its finances on a sustainable footing. But it said a 51 per cent increase leaves “more questions than answers.” It wants to know how the increase would fall across customer classes, and what gains in reliability, water quality and system losses customers would see, and by when.

The YEA struck the most conciliatory note. President Cordell Williams said water is “a critical input into production” for entrepreneurs, and urged meaningful consultation with small firms, phased implementation and measurable commitments on efficiency, accountability and water losses attached to any approval.

The Government’s defence

Water Minister Matthew Samuda is not backing down. Speaking at a Jamaica Observer Press Club on Wednesday alongside NWC Chairman Michael Shaw and Kerr, he acknowledged public concern but insisted no politician wants to raise the cost of living, and that the utility would have asked for less if less would suffice.

He listed what the NWC had absorbed since 2019 without a tariff change: COVID-19 closures that emptied hotels, supply-chain inflation, droughts in 2022, 2023 and 2025, Hurricane Beryl and Tropical Storm Rafael in 2024, and Hurricane Melissa last year. Energy costs, he said, are close to 50 per cent above 2019 levels, and salaries have doubled.

His sharpest argument was about the pipes themselves. In Jamaica’s independent history, Samuda said, the NWC has never replaced even one per cent of its asset base in a single year — the global utility standard — and the country is now “in a race against time.” He pointed to Montego Bay, where the main pipeline at Coral Gardens broke six times in one month and required a $170-million intervention to protect the city’s supply.

Kerr added that the application includes a significantly lower increase for the smallest consumers, but said details cannot be released until the OUR has reviewed it.

Déjà vu at the standpipe

Jamaicans have heard this argument before. In October 2018, when the NWC sought average revenue increases of 23 per cent for water and 38 per cent for sewerage, the same Ian Hayles said the PNP could not support an increase while non-revenue water exceeded 70 per cent. The OUR’s 2019 determination granted considerably less than the utility sought.

Eight years on, non-revenue water still averages 70 to 73 per cent islandwide. The NWC’s target is 30 per cent by 2035. That stubborn number is the hinge of the entire fight: the Government says the money must come before the fix; its critics say the fix must come before the money.

Both may be partly right. A utility that has never renewed its network at a sustainable pace cannot do so on 2019 revenue. But a utility that cannot table four years of audited accounts, rank its own projects, or stop billing people for water that never arrives has yet to earn the public’s trust that a 51 per cent increase will reach their taps.

What happens next

Nothing changes on customers’ bills yet. If the OUR accepts the application for review, it will hold public consultations before making any determination, and Hayles has urged Jamaicans to take part. For households that have learned to live by the drum and the bucket, that consultation may be the only tap still flowing.

— 30 —