The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) says one man was arrested and close to 1,900 illegal connections removed on the weekend.

The electricity distributor, in a release issued this afternoon, says a man was arrested by the police about 3:30 a.m. last Thursday for illegally accessing the Residential Advanced Metering Infrastructure (RAMI) system in the inner-city community of Tivoli Gardens, west Kingston. He has not been identified.

According to the JPS, the perpetrator "allegedly reconnects JPS customers who have been disconnected, and that he allegedly carries out these reconnections for customers in both Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town".

a reconnection exercise

The police reportedly caught him carrying out a reconnection exercise in the energy guard box, located atop a light post.

As it relates to the removal of the illegal connections, JPS says "a total of 1,856 'throw-ups' were removed and 478 cases of bridged meter sockets/self-reconnections, meter bypasses and other illegal connections were detected and removed - including those at two businesses - an off-track betting shop and woodwork establishment".

Last year, 62 persons were arrested and charged for the illegal abstraction of electricity. The arrest in Tivoli Gardens brings to two the number of arrests for this crime, since the start of 2013.