The Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) has be­gun the process of re­view­ing the rates charged by The Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC). In a press re­lease is­sued to­day, the RIC ex­plained the three phas­es of the re­view­ing.

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from RIC:

The first phase of Price Re­view Process com­mences with the re­lease of the RIC’s “In­for­ma­tion Re­quire­ments: Busi­ness Plan Doc­u­ment”, which spec­i­fies the in­for­ma­tion that the Ser­vice Provider (WASA) must sub­mit in or­der for the RIC to un­der­take the Re­view. This will be fol­lowed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the RIC’s Frame­work and Ap­proach Doc­u­ment, which will pro­vide broad de­tails about the process that the RIC will fol­low in con­duct­ing the Re­view.

The sec­ond phase in­cludes the re­lease of var­i­ous Con­sul­ta­tive Doc­u­ments which will present the RIC’s views on key ar­eas that im­pact var­i­ous as­pects of rate de­ter­mi­na­tion, such as qual­i­ty of ser­vice.

The third phase en­tails the re­lease of the RIC’s Draft De­ter­mi­na­tion for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion af­ter re­view­ing the Ser­vice Provider’s Busi­ness Plan/Pric­ing Pro­pos­al. The RIC will con­duct open pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion ses­sions dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

Fi­nal­ly, the RIC will pub­lish its Fi­nal De­ter­mi­na­tion af­ter re­view­ing all com­ments and con­cerns raised dur­ing the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. RIC COM­MENCES THE PRICE RE­VIEW PROCESS FOR WASA Un­der the RIC Act, No. 26 of 1998, the RIC has the le­gal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and au­thor­i­ty to de­ter­mine rates and tar­iffs for T&TEC and WASA. RIC al­so has a du­ty to con­sult with ser­vice providers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of con­sumer in­ter­est groups as part of its statu­to­ry re­mit.

As an im­par­tial and in­de­pen­dent body, the RIC re­mains com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing its man­date of pro­tect­ing con­sumer in­ter­ests while en­sur­ing that the ser­vice provider has ad­e­quate re­sources to pro­vide a rea­son­able qual­i­ty of ser­vice to all cus­tomers.