Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says the State must get val­ue for mon­ey when it comes to spon­sor­ship for cul­tur­al events, in­sist­ing that cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship must ben­e­fit com­mu­ni­ties.

“It must be a mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment where you give back to com­mu­ni­ties,” Padarath said dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day night at the start of two nights of Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions host­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) at the Cou­va South grounds, Cam­den Road, Cou­va.

Padarath said when bmo­bile gets in­to a com­mu­ni­ty, it does not pay rent to par­tic­i­pate in an event, com­pared with the com­pa­ny’s pres­ence at the NCIC’s Di­vali Na­gar, where thou­sands of dol­lars are paid for a small 20x20 space to “push pa­per”.

Asked to com­ment on the deal be­tween the NCIC and Blue Wa­ters, Padarath said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had dealt with the mat­ter.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, speak­ing with GML yes­ter­day at a wa­ter protest in Mal­abar, said the PNM planned to is­sue a re­lease on the is­sue.

Beck­les said cul­ture should not be politi­cised, as T&T is a mul­ti-cul­tur­al and mul­ti-re­li­gious coun­try.

“I will dis­cuss it with my col­leagues and we will put out our re­lease,” Beck­les said.

She said the PNM planned to cel­e­brate Di­vali on No­vem­ber 5 at its Ch­agua­nas of­fices.

No elec­tric­i­ty rate in­creas­es

Padarath said the Gov­ern­ment had no in­ten­tion of in­creas­ing elec­tric­i­ty rates for do­mes­tic con­sumers to ad­dress bil­lions of dol­lars in debt ac­cu­mu­lat­ed un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was ex­plor­ing ways to im­prove T&TEC’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion by in­creas­ing rev­enue, ex­pand­ing com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties and en­sur­ing in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial cus­tomers paid ap­pro­pri­ate elec­tric­i­ty rates.

Padarath ques­tioned the dis­par­i­ty be­tween the num­ber of in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers record­ed by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and T&TEC.

“I can­not un­der­stand, for the life of me, how WASA has over 60,000 in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers on its data­base, and T&TEC on­ly has 5,000 in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers,” he said.

He called for greater co­or­di­na­tion among pub­lic util­i­ties to en­sure com­mer­cial op­er­a­tors were cor­rect­ly clas­si­fied and billed.

“It can­not be that peo­ple con­tin­ue to pay do­mes­tic rates when you have a su­per­mar­ket down­stairs your home, when you’re run­ning a busi­ness down­stairs your home,” he said.

Padarath said busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing from res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties might need sep­a­rate me­ters to dis­tin­guish com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion from do­mes­tic use.

He main­tained that 90 per cent of con­sumers us­ing less than 3,000 kilo­watts in their billing cy­cle were not in­tend­ed to pay more.