Akash Sama­roo

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ac­cused some Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) mem­bers of us­ing the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion’s (RIC) first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the pro­posed in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty rates to re­vive their po­lit­i­cal ca­reers.

There was a heavy pres­ence of past and present UNC rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the meet­ing at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, in­clud­ing Khadi­jah Ameen, Anil Roberts, Bar­ry Padarath and Jack Warn­er. Op­po­si­tion mem­bers took up a lot of the speak­ing time dur­ing the ses­sion with their calls for the RIC not to ap­prove rate in­creas­es for the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC). Padarath went as far as ac­cus­ing RIC’s of­fi­cials of be­ing pup­pets of Min­is­ter Gon­za­les.

In re­sponse, the min­is­ter said: “It’s the na­ture of the UNC, it is their usu­al play­book that I’ve grown ac­cus­tomed to. Some of their spokesper­sons and mem­bers in­tend to make them­selves po­lit­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant through­out this process. Some are even try­ing to res­ur­rect their dead po­lit­i­cal ca­reers by at­tend­ing these pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions. That is the sad re­al­i­ty of UNC pol­i­tics in T&T.”

How­ev­er, RIC of­fi­cials said they were not per­turbed by the com­ments from UNC mem­bers and said they wel­comed and ap­pre­ci­at­ed “views and feed­back from all cit­i­zens and stake­hold­ers” on the Draft De­ter­mi­na­tion for the Elec­tric­i­ty Trans­mis­sion and Dis­tri­b­u­tion Sec­tor 2023-2027’.

Pol­i­tics aside, mem­bers of the pub­lic were able give their opin­ions on the pro­posed in­crease and were al­most unan­i­mous in their re­jec­tion of the plan.

“What does R-I-C stand for?” Law­son Phillips asked.

“The Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion,” an­swered RIC Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Glenn Khan.

“My mean­ing is rob­bing in­no­cent cit­i­zens,” Phillips said.

An­oth­er mem­ber of the pub­lic ques­tioned the tim­ing of the in­crease.

““We are still liv­ing on 2013 salaries,” the woman said, wag­ging her fin­ger at RIC chair­man Dawn Cal­lende. “Food prices high, gas high, every­thing high in this coun­try and RIC come here now in con­sul­ta­tion to speak to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, for us to do what?”

Cal­len­der ex­plained that rate re­views are part of the RIC’s man­date.

“It’s re­al­ly not based on the judge­ment of the state of the econ­o­my, “ she said.

Lyn­don De Gannes said no mat­ter how small an in­crease the RIC is propos­ing, the pub­lic does not have an ex­tra dol­lar to spare.

“$26 for you may be noth­ing but $26 for a poor man with five chil­dren to mind and a rent to pay is a big thing madam chair,” said De Gannes.

Neil Fras­er said, “I be­lieve a very large por­tion of T&TEC’s loss is in fact on the ac­cru­al ba­sis of loan in­ter­ests. Get the Gov­ern­ment to pay what it owes T&TEC, pay off the debt, no more loan in­ter­ests, no need for an in­crease.”

Khan ex­plained that the in­creased rev­enue will go to­ward im­prov­ing T&TEC’s ser­vices. How­ev­er, Mon­i­ca Lewis sug­gest that the man­age­ment of T&TEC should be re­moved.

“If you have a bag with a leak, whether it’s wa­ter or pow­der, are you go­ing to pour more in­to it with­out mend­ing it?” she asked.

Ear­li­er in the ses­sion, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts asked if the cur­rent per­for­mance of T&TEC jus­ti­fies an in­crease in monies paid to it. Cal­len­der replied that the elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny ac­tu­al­ly scores well in its an­nu­al re­views.

“Over the last five years, they have scored above 90 per cent, 95 per cent in some ar­eas, 98 per cent in oth­er ar­eas quite con­sis­tent­ly,” she said.

There were around 50 peo­ple at Tues­day’s meet­ing and the RIC said it was pleased with the turnout as a few hun­dred peo­ple al­so joined in via their so­cial me­dia livestream.

The next pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion will be held to­day at the Ari­ma Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre from 5 pm.