Jan­nelle Bernard

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah says there is no need for the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) to in­crease its rates.

He said rein­te­grat­ing pow­er gen­er­a­tion in­to T&TEC from the gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric­i­ty to trans­mis­sion, out­put and dis­tri­b­u­tion could save the pow­er com­pa­ny mil­lions.

Ab­du­lah said if the pow­er gen­er­a­tors, in par­tic­u­lar Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) which is state-fund­ed and Pow­er­gen which is 51 per cent owned by the state, are brought back in­to T&TEC, the com­pa­ny will save a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars a year. He said at present T&TEC has to pay for elec­tric­i­ty that it doesn’t use and can­not sell.

Ab­du­lah, who raised the is­sue dur­ing an on­line dis­cus­sion on the state of the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions at T&TEC, added that the health and safe­ty is­sues fac­ing T&TEC work­ers should be ad­dressed with ur­gency. He said chances should not ever be tak­en with health and safe­ty when it comes to elec­tric­i­ty ex­po­sure.

Last Oc­to­ber, the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) pro­posed res­i­den­tial rate in­creas­es rang­ing from 15 to 64 per cent, be­tween 37 and 51 per cent for com­mer­cial cus­tomers, and 58 to 72 per cent for in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers. In ad­di­tion, T&TEC plans to switch to a month­ly billing cy­cle rather than every two months.