St. Lu­cia is join­ing at least two oth­er Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­tries in launch­ing a pre­paid elec­tric­i­ty project in Au­gust al­low­ing con­sumers to “top up” their elec­tric­i­ty by tele­phone.

Eq­ui­ty, So­cial Jus­tice, and Em­pow­er­ment Min­is­ter, Joachim Hen­ry, said that the St. Lu­cia Elec­tric­i­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (LUC­ELEC) will launch the pi­lot project and that “per­sons will be able to re­ceive elec­tric­i­ty in a pre­paid mode.

“So you buy your top-up elec­tric­i­ty. You can see it on your phone, and then you can man­age your elec­tric­i­ty,” Hen­ry told re­porters fol­low­ing MOn­day’s Cab­i­net meet­ing, adding that the high in­ci­dence of elec­tric­i­ty dis­con­nec­tions prompt­ed the pre­paid ini­tia­tive.

He said many peo­ple were un­able to af­ford the post­paid modal­i­ty.

“We asked for it. LUC­ELEC has com­mu­ni­cat­ed to me that in Au­gust this year there will be a launch of pre­paid elec­tric­i­ty. If you have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced it, it is some­thing to try. I had it when I was in Do­mini­ca,” Hen­ry said.

Do­mini­ca al­lows con­sumers to pur­chase pow­er for their pre­paid me­ters via tele­phone at their con­ve­nience. The sys­tem al­so op­er­ates in oth­er coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ja­maica.

Like pre­paid tele­phone ser­vice, con­sumers may buy cred­it and top-up as re­quired.

In Ja­maica, the con­sumer gets a Cus­tomer In­ter­phase Unit re­sem­bling a se­cu­ri­ty alarm key­pad, which the pow­er com­pa­ny in­stalls in the home.

The unit beeps when on­ly five kilo­watt-hours re­main. If the con­sumer can­not top up be­fore the cred­it ex­pires, they can call the pow­er com­pa­ny for an ad­di­tion­al five kilo­watt-hours.

Hen­ry said that he had spo­ken with Do­mini­ca’s Health Min­is­ter, who was hav­ing a Fa­ther’s Day ac­tiv­i­ty and “he just gave a guy to top-up his elec­tric­i­ty bill – fifty dol­lars for him to have the ac­tiv­i­ty”.

Hen­ry told re­porters now there would be no need to wait on a month­ly bill.