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PRIME Minister Andrew Holness on Friday told residents of Tower Hill in his St Andrew West Central constituency that widescale electricity theft cannot continue, as he encouraged them to have their connections regularised.Residents of Tower Hill, some of whom say they are paying customers of the Jamaica Public Service (JPS), told the Jamaica Observer that their lives have been interrupted due to long periods of power outages at home and their places of business.But the prime minister's response to the complaints from residents was that too many persons were stealing electricity and overloading JPS systems, causing transformers to be destroyed.Lawmakers last week lashed the light and power company for power outages in some communities, but the company said several illegal connections to distribution lines were affecting its systems, which affects paying customers.Holness visited his constituency Friday to promote the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) programme, which is a partnership with the JPS, to have the homes of residents properly wired so they can become legal consumers of electricity."We are going to spend upwards of $9 million to go through the community to rectify the wiring just to make sure all the wiring is good. This skill of tying a little stone on the hook and den just throw it up on the wire and then you connect to it, that's very dangerous. The transformers that blow, blow because of that. That is why we don't have the electricity in the community."When we wire the place then we are going to come and sit with you individuals and then we are going to try and understand your income levels, what is your economic activity and what you can afford. More than that, it is a danger to your house. Right here in this constituency I have had to go to sites where children are burnt because of poorly wired houses," the prime minister said.Holness highlighted that there were persons who steal electricity, who have multiple air-conditioning units at home and run them all day.He added: "All a di people dem who have four AC and 10 fridge and just a run dem straight, must have little conscience. That is part of why the big transformer blow and everybody has to suffer for that. Children cannot get on to online classes and it is painful. We are starting to correct the situation."Describing her experience as unfair, one female resident shared that she returned to Jamaica from overseas on September 6 to darkness at her house."Here I am, a paying customer and I am suffering the consequences of the theft in the community. I was off the island and I came back on the 6th. I was without light on the 7th and 8th. JPS came in on the 9th and replaced the transformer. The theft continued and the transformer exploded again, so I was without light. They came about 12:30 pm to replace the transformer and light came back and around 7:00 pm the light went again. Here I am paying my bill on time and only have light for a few days in the month."Dorita Fulcott, another resident, said she has had to dump a lot of meat from the freezer in her cookshop which became spoiled due to the frequent electricity outages. She said that her granddaughter who is in sixth form at Merl Grove High School in St Andrew has not attended online classes since last month as a result of the electricity problem, despite paying her Internet bill."When gunaman fire shot and all you can see is the light a come from the gun, who going to come in the dark, risk dem life to buy? You know how much meat I throw weh and who going to refund us. We don't have light for almost two months ago. You have to come in with a rate for people to afford. If they can't afford it, the light going to thief again. My granddaughter should be online. When the bill come we have to pay it even though we naaa access the service," she told the Observer. Omar Sweeney, managing director of JSIF, said Tower Hill is just one of the many communities across the island in which it introduced the Government's electrification programme. A key part of the programme, he said, will be to teach persons how to conserve energy."Today we are here in Tower Hill to be able to allow more persons in this community to have access to a JPS account. We start out by interviewing the different households to find out what electrical appliances they have and we are able to calculate what they are likely to spend on energy. Once they sign the contract to be an account holder at JPS, we come in and wire the homes."We anticipate the cost to be about $9 million for 100 households. They will receive two lights, two plugs and a meter socket to accommodate the prepaid meter and of course they will receive the sensitisation and training of how to conserve and use electricity. Sometimes we leave the television on, but it is burning electricity. There has to be behaviour change," said Sweeney.