The for­mer Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, says while the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to not im­ple­ment the rec­om­mend­ed rate in­crease for T&TEC cus­tomers is ap­peal­ing to cit­i­zens, it is not fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble for the coun­try.

Speak­ing on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew show to­day, Gon­za­les not­ed that the state-owned Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) al­ready is in­debt­ed to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), with no fea­si­ble plan to gen­er­ate rev­enue.

“It can­not be sus­tained,” he as­sert­ed. “The Gov­ern­ment is fund­ing T&TEC to the tune of bil­lions of dol­lars. The amount of mon­ey we sub­sidise in the gen­er­a­tion of gas … T&TEC is not pay­ing NGC mon­ey for the gas they con­sume to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty.”

“From my last count, T&TEC is ow­ing NGC over $3 bil­lion to $5 bil­lion,” he re­vealed. “So, T&TEC is not pay­ing for the gas.”

And the for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter is once again call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath to re­con­sid­er their de­ci­sion to scrap the re­struc­tur­ing plan for the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), which was cre­at­ed un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Gon­za­les says the plan—which is sup­port­ed by an $80 mil­lion dol­lar loan from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB)—is in the best in­ter­est of the cit­i­zens of this coun­try.

“A num­ber of key rec­om­men­da­tions were made to trans­form the Au­thor­i­ty to en­sure that all cit­i­zens—re­gard­less of wher­ev­er you are, po­lit­i­cal par­ty that you sup­port, or your ge­og­ra­phy wher­ev­er you are lo­cat­ed—would re­ceive a sup­ply of wa­ter,” Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia.

So im­por­tant was that plan, and so com­pelling was it that the IDB ex­am­ined it and of­fered the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go fi­nan­cial sup­port to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions in the plan, so that the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go could have a sup­ply of wa­ter as well as waste­water ser­vices.”

Last Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar pub­licly de­stroyed the doc­u­ments con­tain­ing the trans­for­ma­tion plan for WASA pro­posed by the for­mer PNM Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter is con­cerned that cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion is be­ing blind­ed by po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, rather than fo­cussing on en­sur­ing the up­grad­ing and mod­ernising of wa­ter sup­plies and waste­water man­age­ment in T&T.