Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les has writ­ten to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds to fa­cil­i­tate the launch of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to dis­rup­tions at the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion’s (RIC) re­cent pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the pro­posed T&TEC rate in­crease.

Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that his re­quest comes af­ter the RIC was forced to abrupt­ly end its con­sul­ta­tion at the Cen­tre Pointe Mall, Ch­agua­nas, last Wednes­day, due to se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, af­ter the crowd threat­ened to ig­nite flam­ma­ble liq­uid, pa­rad­ed around a repli­ca a cof­fin and threat­ened mem­bers of the head ta­ble, among oth­er dis­plays of what it (RIC) called “un­ruly be­hav­iour.”

“I thought it was nec­es­sary, on my part as Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, to raise the is­sue with my col­league, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and to in­di­cate to him my pro­found con­cerns with re­spect to what is hap­pen­ing at these con­sul­ta­tions,” Gon­za­les said.

“The fact that they (con­sul­ta­tions) have been hi­jacked by po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tors of the op­po­si­tion par­ty and on this par­tic­u­lar event, the fact that the staff of the RIC, their se­cu­ri­ty has been threat­ened. I thought it was in­cum­bent on me to ask for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be con­duct­ed so that who­ev­er might be re­spon­si­ble, that the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion can be tak­en against them.”

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the con­sul­ta­tions al­ways have a po­lice pres­ence and there were of­fi­cers at the event as well. Min­is­ter Gon­za­les ad­mit­ted that the of­fi­cers should have been “a lit­tle bit more ro­bust in how they en­force the law.”

He said this so­lid­i­fied his view there was an or­ches­trat­ed at­tempt to dis­rupt the pro­ceed­ings. Gon­za­les said Hinds promised to speak to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on the mat­ter.

In a re­lease fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, the RIC said it sup­ports all cit­i­zens’ rights to share their views, but “strong­ly con­demns the dis­rup­tive, in­ap­pro­pri­ate and threat­en­ing be­hav­iour ex­hib­it­ed by the per­sons at­tend­ing the con­sul­ta­tion and the un­pro­fes­sion­al be­hav­iour of elect­ed of­fi­cials in at­ten­dance.”

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein ques­tioned the RIC’s in­de­pen­dence.

“The ser­vices providers, which is T&TEC, WASA, col­lects monies based on the rates they charge and then the RIC ba­si­cal­ly tax those ser­vice providers on that rev­enue so they have mon­ey to run the RIC,” he said.

This, he said, is ap­proved by the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. Ho­sein said his re­search found le­gal no­tices in­di­cat­ing that be­tween 2020 and 2022, the RIC col­lect­ed $30.3 mil­lion from T&TEC.

“So, if T&TEC in­creas­es the rates, it means T&TEC will earn more mon­ey di­rect­ly. What does that mean? It means T&TEC will now have to pay the RIC more mon­ey. In ef­fect, are these con­sul­ta­tions re­al­ly be­ing con­duct­ed in­de­pen­dent­ly?” he said.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les said this was an­oth­er case of the UNC at­tempt­ing to un­der­mine the RIC’s in­de­pen­dence and politi­cise the con­sul­ta­tion process.

“That is not the way in which the RIC gets their rev­enue or their cess, as it is called in the leg­is­la­tion, from ser­vice providers. The RIC, on a year­ly ba­sis, will sub­mit their bud­get show­ing their in­come and their planned ex­pens­es for the year and that bud­get is ap­proved by the cab­i­net and laid in the par­lia­ment,” he said.

“Any cess or rev­enues re­ceived from the ser­vice providers are pro­por­tion­ate­ly shared among the ser­vice providers. So, if T&TEC was to ex­pe­ri­ence an in­crease in their rev­enue based on the im­pend­ing rate in­crease, it does not in any way re­sult in any in­crease in rev­enues for the RIC.”