PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

If the changes pro­posed by the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) for elec­tric­i­ty rates are im­ple­ment­ed, res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial cus­tomers will not on­ly be pay­ing more for elec­tric­i­ty but pay­ing month­ly as well.

The RIC yes­ter­day of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced its sug­gest­ed new rates for the Trinidad & To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Hilton Trinidad in Port-of-Spain.

RIC chair Dawn Cal­len­der ex­plained the new Kilo­watt Tier groups which would vary in per­cent­age in­creas­es if the pro­pos­als are ac­cept­ed.

The pro­posed rate in­creas­es for res­i­den­tial cus­tomers range from 15 per cent to as high as 64 per cent, based on Kilo­watt con­sump­tion.

For ex­am­ple, 200 kW us­age for the cur­rent billing cy­cle of a res­i­den­tial cus­tomer would cost about $58. Un­der the sug­gest­ed rates, it would be $71 over two months or $35.50 per month, ver­sus the cur­rent cost of $29.

Com­mer­cial cus­tomers will see per­cent­age in­creas­es rang­ing from 51 per cent to 63 per cent. A com­mer­cial cus­tomer us­ing 500 kW cur­rent­ly pays $232.50. Un­der the pro­posed rates, these cus­tomers would pay $380 or $190 per month.

The pro­posed changes will now be dis­cussed at pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions across the coun­try in per­son and vir­tu­al­ly over the space of three months.

Both Cal­len­der and RIC chair­man Glenn Khan ad­mit­ted that the tim­ing of the an­nounce­ment was not ide­al, as they recog­nised the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures in­curred by the pub­lic.

How­ev­er, Khan ex­plained that the rates were long over­due for ad­just­ments.

“It’s a tricky sit­u­a­tion be­cause cus­tomers want low rates, and when you talk to the pub­lic, they ask are you go­ing to raise rates? It is not a good time. But if you don’t raise rates and T&TEC is un­able to cov­er the cost it spends to pro­vide you with ser­vices over time, the qual­i­ty of that ser­vice will di­min­ish,” said Khan, who point­ed to the in­creased re­ports of out­ages around the coun­try, as well as the is­land­wide black­out in Feb­ru­ary, as a sign that the util­i­ty was start­ing to fall short of its ser­vice lev­el.

“There must be some sort of arrange­ment where­by rates are af­ford­able for the ba­sic needs and af­ter that, we have to en­sure re­cov­ery of costs in or­der to pro­vide con­tin­u­ing re­li­able ser­vice,” he said.

Cal­len­der al­so not­ed that T&TEC was los­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly with the cur­rent rates in place.

“We al­so con­sid­ered as we moved the rates how that would im­pact T&TEC. In some ar­eas, T&TEC would have to for­go as much as $10.5 mil­lion in rev­enue to get low­er rates. In all of this we were es­pe­cial­ly pas­sion­ate about hold­ing to the phi­los­o­phy of as­sist­ing those who are most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety,” Cal­len­der said.

The RIC al­so said it in­tends to in­tro­duce a month­ly billing cy­cle, as it would great­ly help the cash flow of the state util­i­ty.

RIC chair Cal­len­der said this change could al­so help cus­tomers, as it would spread the costs through­out the year.

“We are rec­om­mend­ing the switch to month­ly billing and that would as­sist in cash flow plan­ning for every­one. On T&TEC’s side and on the side of the con­sumers, just hav­ing a reg­u­lar month­ly bill be­cause we know in some in­stances, a bi-month­ly bill could be a bit of a sur­prise and we will con­tin­ue to work with cus­tomers,” said Cal­len­der.

Con­tact­ed on the pro­posed rate hike yes­ter­day, for­mer tem­po­rary sen­a­tor and cur­rent Women’s In­sti­tute for Al­ter­na­tive De­vel­op­ment (WINAD) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Fo­lade Mu­to­ta, felt the cli­mate was not right for such an ad­just­ment.

“Of course, T&TEC is go­ing to make an ar­gu­ment that it needs to in­crease its rates in or­der for it to re­main a vi­able en­ti­ty,” Mu­to­ta said.

“But there has to be a so­cial com­po­nent to your busi­ness mod­el. And that so­cial com­po­nent re­al­ly would al­so de­ter­mine or should weigh in on to what ex­tent you make these changes or the fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions that you’re mak­ing, be­cause of the po­ten­tial ef­fects on your stake­hold­ers and your con­sumers.”

She added, “I think, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the agency, there has to be a pub­lic pol­i­cy that guides how and when they do these in­creas­es. I don’t think that this is the right cli­mate for rate in­creas­es. I don’t think it is the right ap­proach.”