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| Ernie Stapleton, P.S. Communication, Works and Public Utilities. |
Charlestown Nevis (February 28, 2007) -- Nevis is predicting a need for approximately 54,000 energy savings bulbs to outfit its population. That's according to a survey on a project recently carried out by a team of Cuban officials.
The survey was done in conjunction with the Cuban government and the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis with respect to providing energy saving bulbs to the islands.
According to Permanent Secretary, Communications, Works, and Public Utilities, Mr. Ernie Stapleton the findings of the survey indicate that about 31.3 percent of the bulbs needed are 110 volts and about 68.2 per cent are 220 volts.
Mr. Stapleton added that a shipment of bulbs from Cuba to Nevis is expected shortly and arrangements would be made to distribute the bulbs to the Nevisian population. He also took the opportunity to appeal to the general public for their support in this very important venture.
"Based on the experience in St. Kitts their [Cubans] plan is to have 15 days in which to distribute the bulbs and they are predicting that they will do on an average about 10 houses per day. They can go out Monday to Friday from 2 o'clock in the afternoon to 7 pm. On a Saturday they would want to distribute the bulbs from about 8 in the morning to about 6 in the afternoon.
I think that this is a very important venture where what the population would get is energy saving bulbs. The Cuban social workers are not discriminating between the poor and not so poor, what they are doing is that they want to distribute these bulbs to everybody so that everybody could benefit from the project", he said. ~~adz:Right~~
Mr. Stapleton said that the proposed time is based on the experience on St. Kitts that most people would be home during these hours. A team of 25 Cuban social workers would travel to Nevis to install the bulbs and volunteers from Nevis are currently in demand to compliment the number of social workers that are expected to arrive on the island.
"This will involve a team of 25 social workers from Cuba and they are hoping that we on the island of Nevis could also provide local counterpart support to work with the team; a ratio of 1 to 1 and hoping to get the support of NEVLEC in terms of the distribution of the bulbs.
A meeting will be convened shortly with the stakeholders in government to work out the logistics and details of how to plan the distribution so the process can be effective", Mr. Stapleton said.
The replacement of the incandescent bulbs to energy saving bulbs has been described as timely, in light of the fact that the Nevis Island Administration earlier this year took the decision to introduce the fuel surcharge to customers of NEVLEC.
The energy saving bulbs would help to buffer some of the increased cost, especially in the atmosphere where the price of oil on the world market is escalating.
