AKASH SAMA­ROO

There was an over­whelm­ing and em­phat­ic re­jec­tion of the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion's (RIC) pro­posed rate in­crease for elec­tric­i­ty, when the Com­mis­sion held its first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion, yes­ter­day, at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Tu­na­puna.

Even af­ter RIC of­fi­cials sought to ex­plain that pay­ing more will even­tu­al­ly lead to a bet­ter ser­vice from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), mem­bers of the au­di­ence posit­ed that the in­crease was an in­sen­si­tive move giv­en the state of the econ­o­my.

"We are suf­fer­ing, and the tim­ing of this in­crease, is not right now," said Lyn­don De Gannes.

"We are not averse to the in­crease, we are averse to the tim­ing of the in­crease, and we are say­ing no no no! Twen­ty-six dol­lars for you may be noth­ing, but twen­ty-six dol­lars for a poor man with five chil­dren to mind and a rent to pay is a big thing, madam chair."

He was not the on­ly one.

"We are still liv­ing on 2013 salaries," a woman said, wag­ging her fin­ger at RIC Chair­woman Dawn Cal­len­der.

"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?"

How­ev­er, Cal­len­der ex­plained that rate re­views are a part of the RIC's man­date, and none were con­duct­ed in re­cent years.

"So, it's re­al­ly not based on the judge­ment of the state of the econ­o­my, " Cal­len­der said.

Mean­while, mem­bers of the pub­lic told the RIC if T&TEC needs to gen­er­ate more mon­ey to meet its op­er­a­tional costs, then it is putting its hands in­to the wrong pock­ets.

"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 owed T&TEC, pay off the debt, no more loan in­ter­ests, no need for an in­crease," said Neil Fras­er dur­ing his turn at the mi­cro­phone.

Fras­er was not the on­ly one call­ing for state agen­cies to pay their out­stand­ing bills to the util­i­ty.

Former UNC Member of Parliament Jack Warner makes a comment on the proposed rate hike for T&TEC, during the RIC's public consultation on the issue, at the Centre of Excellence in Tunapuna, on Tuesday 17 January 2023.

For­mer Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Jack Warn­er al­so spoke at the meet­ing.

He said he knows first-hand—hav­ing run two min­istries—of the large sums the state owes to T&TEC.

Warn­er al­so ar­gued that the RIC is back­ward in its ap­proach. He said in­stead of ask­ing peo­ple to pay more for a bet­ter ser­vice, a bet­ter ser­vice should be pro­vid­ed first to jus­ti­fy the in­crease.

Ear­li­er in the meet­ing the RIC Chair­woman told the pub­lic that T&TEC scores high­ly in its an­nu­al re­views.

"Over the last five years, they have scored above 90 per­cent, 95 per­cent in some ar­eas, 98 per­cent in oth­er ar­eas quite con­sis­tent­ly," Cal­len­dar re­vealed.

How­ev­er, UNC Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts chal­lenged Cal­len­der on one par­tic­u­lar met­ric.

"In that cat­e­go­ry of 98 and 95 per­cent, is it out­ages?” Roberts asked. “Was that one of the cat­e­gories they scored 98 on? Out­ages across Trinidad and To­ba­go? Black­outs? How did they score on them?"

Cal­len­der told Roberts he would be pro­vid­ed with those de­tails lat­er but as­sured that he will get a re­sponse.

Roberts then ar­gued that if T&TEC has run it­self in­to debt, then the man­age­ment of the state util­i­ty should be re­moved.

He was sup­port­ed by Mon­i­ca Lewis, a mem­ber of the au­di­ence who pro­posed an anal­o­gy to the RIC.

"I think Mr Roberts is try­ing to say, 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?"

But Cal­len­der said in some cas­es more fi­nances were need­ed to im­prove the sys­tem.

Roberts was one of sev­er­al UNC mem­bers in the au­di­ence. Oth­er no­table Op­po­si­tion mem­bers were St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen and Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath. They, along with par­ty ac­tivists, all voiced their opin­ion, strong­ly re­ject­ing the pro­posed in­crease.

The sec­ond pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion will be held at the Ari­ma Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 19, at 5pm.