Rev­e­la­tions made in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day about the debt owed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) by state agen­cies, and that owed by the com­mis­sion to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) for nat­ur­al gas sup­plies, are cause for deep con­cern, even fear.

Asked by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP for Princes Town, Bar­ry Padarath, about the func­tion­ing of the vi­tal util­i­ty, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les re­port­ed an alarm­ing sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing the fi­nan­cial con­di­tion of the sup­pli­er of pow­er to the na­tion.

The Com­mis­sion is owed TT$1.9 bil­lion by state agen­cies, the Min­is­ter re­vealed.

But the tale of this util­i­ty does not end there. Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, who has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for its op­er­a­tions, T&TEC in turn owes the sum of TT$6.1 bil­lion to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny from which it buys gas to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty.

MP Padarath did not pur­sue in fol­low-up ques­tion­ing, date­lines of the sum owed, whether pay­ments on the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed and ac­cu­mu­lat­ing debt have and are be­ing made, or what is the ex­pec­ta­tion of the debt be­ing set­tled.

Nonethe­less, that those sums are owed var­i­ous­ly by state agen­cies and that the Com­mis­sion has a seem­ing­ly un­payable debt to the NGC, should send every cit­i­zen, in­di­vid­ual and cor­po­rate, in­to deep con­cern about the con­se­quences and even­tu­al out­come of these out­stand­ing ar­rears.

Con­sid­er for in­stance, what must be a pre­car­i­ous ex­is­tence for T&TEC to op­er­ate with­in such a debt over­hang—that which it is owed and what it owes to NGC. So too for the NGC to have on its bal­ance sheet, an out­stand­ing debt to it of TT$6 bil­lion. Even though NGC has much broad­er and more sta­ble sources of in­come it can­not af­ford to in­def­i­nite­ly drag that $6 bil­lion load with­out it af­fect­ing in a se­ri­ous man­ner its op­er­a­tions.

Equal­ly, it must al­so be asked how sus­tain­able and over what pe­ri­od can the TT$1.9 bil­lion debt be car­ried by T&TEC?

Con­sid­er that elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion are all high-tech op­er­a­tions which re­quire con­stant tech­no­log­i­cal up­grade and in­no­va­tion which cost hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, quite a por­tion in for­eign cur­ren­cy, if it is to con­tin­ue ser­vic­ing the needs of cus­tomers.

Cit­i­zens—cor­po­rate and do­mes­tic—know what it means when the sys­tem goes down for a few hours. The dis­rup­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with all of that, costs se­ri­ous dol­lars. Out­ages al­so im­pact the wear and tear of the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal hu­man ca­pac­i­ty to with­stand dis­rup­tion and more. Who can say that the coun­try can be as­sured against a calami­tous break­down as­so­ci­at­ed with an in­ca­pac­i­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion.

For cer­tain, the debt owed to the Com­mis­sion and the debt it owes to an­oth­er state agency at ex­tra­or­di­nary high lev­els, are mat­ters of great con­se­quence and will have to be set­tled one day to avoid a ma­jor calami­ty.