Cuban light bulb donation should cut electric bills

When watching our next story it will be tempting to recall those old familiar light bulb jokes. But humour aside, the project inaugurated today in Lake Independence stands a good chance of saving hard pressed Belizean consumers some serious money. News Five’s Janelle Chanona reports.

Janelle Chanona, Reporting
This afternoon, Marilyn Wade?s Fern Lane home was invaded by an army of energy savers as part of a new initiative between Belize and Cuba.

The idea is to replace traditional incandescent household light bulbs with their fluorescent counterparts. This will reduce energy consumption which in turn, should lower bills. Cuba is donating more than three hundred thousand Chinese made Phillips lightbulbs which will then be installed by a team of Belize Defence Force soldiers, Cuban social workers and civilian volunteers who will roam the country. Homes Lake Independence are first but will soon be followed by those in Valley of Peace in the Cayo District.

But what will happen to the old bulbs?

Eugenio Martinez, Cuban Ambassador to Belize
?We are going to break them.?

Janelle Chanona
?You are going to destroy them??

Eugenio Martinez
?We are going to destroy them. We are going to put them in a bag and destroy them. We have to break them. It?s eighty watts for nothing and now we are putting eighteen, eleven and five watts. There are four reasons why we have to do this … one, you will pay less, because you consume less. Second the bulbs last longer–five six times longer, so you can have a bulb for five six years. Third, you will consume less electricity and less heat because it will produce more light than heat. And then it?s more for less, that?s what we are offering.?

Cordel Hyde, Minister of Housing
?We have enough bulbs for the entire country, every single household whether red, blue, yellow, green.?

Prime Minister Said Musa
?To bring down the cost of living for our people, particularly low income people who face this light bill every month and of course as was pointed out a while ago, with the G.S.T. in many cases the light bill has gone up. So we feel very committed to doing everything possible to hold down the project for our people.?

Dawn Sampson, Corporate Communications, B.E.L.
?We promote other initiatives such as turning off infrequently used televisions, painting your rooms with light, illumination in mind, using lighter colours that reflect light, turning off your computer monitors because you know, computer monitors use sixty percent of the power that computers use. So these are some of the things that we promote and again, we support any initiative that promotes energy conservation.?

Belize is the sixth Caribbean country to participate in the Cuban Energy Saving Project.

Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona.

If purchased at retail, the cost of the light bulbs is said to be in the range of four point five million Belize dollars.