Stories by
Senior Multimedia Journalist
joshua.seemungal@guardian.co.tt
By the end of the month, the population should know whether electricity rates will be increased, according to Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales. The minister, who spoke after the official opening of WASA’s new Las Lomas #12 Well, said the recommendations made by the Regulated Industries Commission are still with a subcommittee of the Cabinet.
“I anticipate that by the end of this month, the Cabinet will be making a decision on that, and the country will be made aware of the outcome of our decision. “We’ve asked T&TEC and the RIC to submit further information as part of our deliberations to add to the subcommittee. So the matter has not gone back to the RIC. It’s a matter of just seeking clarification on some of the regulations made by the independent RIC,” he said.
In a Guardian Media article last Thursday, it was reported that under the RIC’s proposal, electricity bills could increase by as much as 124 per cent by 2028.
The current bi-monthly bill for the average residential household could more than double (increasing by 124 per cent) by 2028 if the Cabinet accepts the recommendations of the Regulated Industries Commission (RIC) in their entirety, according to Guardian Media’s Business Desk estimates.
“Residential electricity bills are projected to increase by between 105 per cent (200 kWh per month) and 229 per cent (5,000 kWh per month) across the board, depending on electricity consumption. A customer using 940 kWh every two months (or 470 kWh per month) pays the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) $318 every two months, including VAT, at this time. That would work out to be $159 a month if the RIC recommendation for T&TEC to issue bills on a monthly basis instead of every two months, is accepted,” the article stated. Gonzales also addressed the possibility of water rates being increased in the future. While he did not say that water rates would be raised, he said that under current rates, WASA could never attain financial stability.
He said that many changes are needed to reverse the financial situation of WASA. In June 2023, it was reported that WASA had approximately $3.3 billion in accumulated deficits. “There is no way WASA can become financially stable with those rates for water. Secondly, a decision was taken 25 years ago to enter into desalination water when two contracts were entered into with DESALCOTT and Seven Seas.
“I think it’s about 50 million gallons of water—desalination water—that goes into the distribution grid for commercial and private customers. That is costing you, the taxpayers of this country, nearly $700 million on an annual basis that WASA has to fund. You are purchasing that water at a premium price because desalinated water is very expensive, and you are selling it at such a rate that you are not even recovering a small fraction of that cost,” he said.
“So the combination of all of that—a lot of customers are not paying their bills—I’m talking about domestic, individual, even state agencies not paying their bills. So it’s an amalgamation of issues that would have resulted in WASA being in that financial state,” he admitted.
Gonzales said to improve the financial standing of the organisation, new wells have to be drilled, more customers must pay their bills, the country’s reliance on desalination water must be reduced, and measures to cut operational costs must be taken.
When asked if retrenchment was also a necessary component of such measures, he said, “Restructuring and reorganisation are part of the strategy to make WASA sustainable, and that’s the reason why the report that was laid in Cabinet in 2021, you know, spoke to the need to restructure the organisation, restructure the managerial structure of the organisation—reduce it from 426 to 220 managers, introduce technology so that you can reduce the costs of operation instead of relying on manual labour—all of these things to reengineer the organisation.”
He said the reduction of managers will be done on a phased basis, starting with executive leadership.