SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte says the dis­tri­b­u­tion of 400,000 LED bulbs to house­holds across the coun­try is not Gov­ern­ment’s on­ly bright idea.

Le Hunte said this ini­ti­ave is part of an on­go­ing en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy cam­paign that will help put mon­ey in peo­ple’s pock­ets and re­duce Gov­ern­ment elec­tric­i­ty­bill.

He was re­spond­ing to last Mon­day’s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert who promised to re­place all in­can­des­cent bulbs to en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient ones to 400,000 house­holds free of charges in T&T and re­move all tax­es and du­ties on LED bulbs for five years.

But Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fired back at Im­bert, stat­ing that peo­ple need­ed jobs and not bulbs.

She ques­tioned if this was the bright­est idea Gov­ern­ment could have come with.

How­ev­er, in 2013 then en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment launched a light bulb swap pro­gramme.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 house­holds from South, Cen­tral and North Trinidad were in­vit­ed to swap their in­can­des­cent bulbs for com­pact flu­o­res­cent light to de­ter­mine the dif­fer­ence with their elec­tric­i­ty bills.

Ram­nar­ine said his gov­ern­ment had hoped to phase out the use of in­can­des­cent bulbs.

Yes­ter­day, Le Hunte said the LED bulb is one of a se­ries of en­er­gy sav­ing ini­tia­tives by his min­istry to help pro­mote en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and con­ser­va­tion among cit­i­zens.

He said Gov­ern­ment would start the balling rolling by in­stalling LED bulbs be­gin­ning at Tow­er C Port-of-Spain In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front which would help re­duce the State’s elec­tric­i­ty bill by mil­lions of dol­lars.

The use of LED bulbs, Le Hunte said can al­so re­duce a per­son’s elec­tric­i­ty bill by 25 per cent and it last ten times longer than an in­can­des­cent bulb.

“This is a good thing for the coun­try. It’s a pity that some of us when we don’t seem to un­der­stand things we seem to triv­i­alise it. And that is un­for­tu­nate,” Le Hunte said.

This move, he said will re­sult in a win-win sit­u­a­tion for cit­i­zens, the coun­try and en­vi­ron­ment.

“We have to re­duce our CO2 emis­sions,” he in­sist­ed

The Gov­ern­ment, he said was yet to come up with a plan to dis­trib­ute the bulbs and were look­ing at mod­els from oth­er coun­tries.

T&TEC cus­tomers may be ei­ther asked to bring in their old bulbs which would be re­placed by new ones or the new bulbs can be de­liv­er at the homes of cus­tomers.

He said there will be a cap to the num­ber of bulbs dis­trib­uted to each house­hold.

“We are not the first coun­try that is do­ing this. The prop­er ten­der­ing prac­tices need to be put in place....and we will do that to en­sure that the pop­u­la­tion ben­e­fit from this ini­tia­tive. It’s all part of chang­ing peo­ple’s be­hav­iour. I have recog­nised how peo­ple are some­times scep­ti­cal. You some­times have to jump-start some­thing. This is will jump-start an ac­tion that will be ben­e­fi­cial.”

Asked if Gov­ern­ment will source an in­ter­na­tion­al or lo­cal sup­pli­er for the bulbs, Le Hunte said we should not get ahead of our­selves, stat­ing that all pro­cure­ment mea­sures will be put in place by the Gov­ern­ment to get good qual­i­ty bulbs at the most com­pet­i­tive price.

He as­sured the process will be trans­par­ent.