标签： Jamaica

KINGSTON, Jamaica — A sharp political clash has erupted over municipal road maintenance funding in Jamaica’s capital region, with a senior cabinet minister calling out the head of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) for longstanding hypocrisy in his complaints about resource shortages.

Robert Morgan, Minister without Portfolio with responsibility for Works, has publicly pushed back against KSAMC Chairman Andrew Swaby following the body’s recent announcement of a hike in annual divisional allocation funds. Under the new adjustment, urban divisions will see their allocations rise from the previous $10 million to $13 million, while rural divisions within the KSAMC’s jurisdiction will receive $13.5 million, a notable increase from prior levels.

In an official statement released this week, Morgan argued that this very funding adjustment lays bare the contradiction at the heart of Swaby’s repeated public grievances. For months, the mayor has centered his public messaging on blaming insufficient funding for the poor state of parish-managed roads, but Morgan points out that the KSAMC has long held the legal authority to increase these allocations on its own.

“The mayor cannot continue to lament the condition of roads while failing to fully use the resources and authority available to the KSAMC,” Morgan stated in his remarks. “This recent increase confirms that the corporation can do more for parish council roads, drains, mitigation works and emergency interventions. He has more money at his disposal than his predecessor ever did, yet he has failed to deliver on the key commitments he made to voters before taking office as Mayor.”

Morgan also highlighted a longstanding imbalance in responsibility for road repairs, noting that the central government-run National Works Agency (NWA) has been forced to carry a disproportionate share of the workload fixing roads that officially fall under municipal oversight.

While the Jamaican central government remains open to collaborative work with the KSAMC to improve infrastructure for local residents, Morgan emphasized that collaboration cannot require the national government to absorb all the cost while municipal resources go underutilized. “The KSAMC must use its increased allocations to repair and maintain the roads under its control,” he said. “That is core to their mandate.”

Morgan further pointed to a key historical context that undercuts Swaby’s position: back in 2020, when Swaby served as a local councillor before becoming mayor, he seconded a formal resolution calling for exactly this kind of increase in divisional allocations from the Parochial Revenue Fund, to specifically fund road and drain upgrades.

“He understood the importance of higher divisional allocations then. The question is why it has taken this long for the same urgency to be reflected in the Corporation’s own decisions,” Morgan added.

To address growing public confusion, Morgan is also calling for full transparency from the KSAMC around how municipal road funds have been spent to date. Residents across Kingston and St Andrew have a right to clear information on which projects are prioritized, how allocations are distributed, and when scheduled repair works will be completed, he argued. “No one knows how these funds are spent right now. Jamaicans deserve to know,” Morgan said.

A widespread, island-wide power outage that shut down communities and economic activity across Jamaica last month has triggered urgent regulatory reform, with the country’s energy minister announcing mandatory compensation rules will be written into all future electricity operating licenses. Addressing Jamaica’s House of Representatives on Wednesday, Energy Minister Daryl Vaz framed the sweeping policy change as a direct response to critical gaps exposed by the June 5 blackout, which left no corner of the country untouched by power loss. Currently, Jamaican law includes no binding requirements for utility providers to compensate customers for financial losses stemming from large-scale outages — a flaw Vaz says has been made untenable by the scope of harm from last month’s incident. The outage disrupted daily life for households, forced business closures across all sectors, and halted operations at public institutions nationwide. Vaz emphasized that countless businesses and ordinary Jamaicans have documented tangible losses from the event, making the issue of compensation non-negotiable moving forward. “I have consistently maintained that businesses and Jamaicans have suffered demonstrable losses because of an outage of this magnitude. The commitment that I’m making to you is that the new licence and the new Act that will go with the licence will have mandatory compensatory measures and sanctions,” Vaz told parliamentary members. The minister specifically highlighted the disproportionate harm faced by small, informal and micro-businesses, including street vendors and independent event promoters, many of whom sank upfront investments into activities that were scrapped by the blackout. For these operators, he argued, a simple apology is meaningless: “What do you say? Sorry? Sorry can’t help them to send their child back to school Monday morning when they have spent the money to invest and they can’t get a return.” Beyond the lack of outage compensation rules, Vaz also renewed longstanding criticism of Jamaica’s existing power sector regulatory framework, noting that even customers who suffer damaged appliances from power surges face notoriously slow, unsuccessful claims processes that rarely result in payment for losses. The announcement of regulatory reform came as opposition lawmakers put forward additional targeted relief for those affected by the June 5 blackout. Dr. Dayton Campbell, opposition Member of Parliament for Westmoreland Eastern, called on the government to implement immediate support for event organizers and other groups that lost income when planned weekend activities were canceled. Campbell’s proposal would allow approved event permits to be transferred to new future dates, rather than forcing affected organizers to re-pay full permit fees for a rescheduled event. Vaz embraced the suggestion, describing it as a pragmatic, reasonable solution that works for both impacted residents and local municipal governments. “They can use it at another time for another event, which means that the municipal corporation doesn’t have to find the money to refund,” he explained, adding that he plans to open discussions with the Ministry of Local Government to move the proposal forward. The June 5 blackout affected every registered power customer across Jamaica. The Jamaica Public Service Company, the country’s main utility provider, has already submitted an initial incident report to the Office of Utilities Regulation, with a full final report due as investigations into the root cause of the outage continue.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaican consumers fed up with substandard mobile phone connectivity are set to see long-awaited regulatory intervention in the island’s telecommunications sector, with the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) on track to gain the ability to independently audit service quality within the next several months. Minister of Energy, Transport and Telecommunications Daryl Vaz shared this update during an official ministerial briefing hosted by the Jamaica Information Service (JIS) at Kingston’s PCJ Building Thursday, speaking with JIS CEO Giovanni Dennis. For years, consumers across Jamaica have lodged consistent complaints about pervasive telecom service failures, from frequent dropped calls to unexpected diversion of incoming calls directly to voicemail. Until now, the regulatory body has lacked the independent tools to confirm these consumer reports against the mandatory minimum service standards already enshrined in Jamaican law, Vaz explained. “There is a minimum quality of service level that has been established. I think the issue has been that the OUR has not had a way to independently verify the metrics,” he told attendees. Vaz also clarified that ongoing service challenges long predate the destruction caused by Hurricane Melissa, which struck the island in October 2025. While the storm exacerbated existing connectivity issues, the two dominant telecom providers operating in Jamaica — Digicel and Flow — have advised the ministry that full post-hurricane infrastructure restoration, including realignment of damaged network antennas and other critical repairs, is scheduled for completion by July of this year. Even with full restoration finished, however, Vaz warned that the sector’s deep-seated quality problems will not be resolved by repair work alone. “I do believe that the equipment and the ability of the OUR to verify independently, and with their own equipment, the quality of service, will go a far way,” he said, noting that once the new verification tools are in place, the OUR will also gain the authority to levy legally mandated penalties against providers that fail to meet required service standards. Beyond the new testing equipment, Vaz signaled that broader sweeping reforms are on the horizon for Jamaica’s telecom sector, including upcoming reviews of the OUR’s institutional structure, existing telecom legislation, and the regulator’s enforcement powers. The minister also highlighted that increased market competition is a core pillar of the government’s strategy to improve service outcomes for consumers. Currently, the Jamaican market is controlled by two major providers, while a third licensed telecom operator has not yet fully launched its commercial services across the island. Vaz expressed optimism that the new entrant will be ready to begin full operations by the end of 2026, a shift that he expects will drive incumbents to improve their service quality to retain customers. “I do believe that competition will play a critical role in getting better quality service by telecoms,” he added.

In a sharp escalation of economic pressure on Havana, the United States unveiled new sanctions Thursday targeting Cuba’s central state-owned energy enterprise, Union Cuba-Petroleo (CUPET), the entity that controls nearly all of the Caribbean nation’s crude extraction, refining and fuel distribution networks.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an official statement that the designation was rooted in claims that key CUPET assets were illegally seized from U.S. property holders decades ago. The sanctioning action imposes a full ban on any financial dealings between the firm and all U.S. persons and entities, cutting off another critical lifeline for Cuba’s already collapsing energy sector.

This latest move builds on a series of aggressive policy shifts the Trump administration has pursued against Cuba since earlier this year. Back in January, shortly after a U.S.-backed military operation ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro from power, the Trump administration cut off all remaining oil shipments from Venezuela, which had been Cuba’s primary crude supplier for years. Since that order, only one Russian-flagged oil tanker has successfully delivered fuel to the island, amid repeated U.S. threats to sanction any third country that provides economic or energy assistance to Cuba.

Trump has openly framed his administration’s policy as an effort to end more than 60 years of communist governance in Cuba, and has repeatedly claimed that the island nation—located just 93 miles off the coast of Florida—poses an acute national security threat to the U.S. Just this week, he even raised the prospect of a full U.S. “takeover” of the country of 9.6 million people.

Even before Thursday’s new sanctions, the longstanding U.S. trade blockade and expanded restrictions on firms doing business with Cuban state entities had already pushed Cuba into its worst economic and energy crisis in 30 years. Cuban officials confirmed Wednesday that the U.S. oil restrictions have already disrupted United Nations humanitarian operations, blocking the delivery of 170 containers of critical aid supplies to the island. In recent days, residents of the capital city of Havana have endured rolling blackouts that leave parts of the city without electricity for up to 30 consecutive hours, and shortages of basic necessities including food, clean running water and prescription medicine have grown increasingly severe across the country.