It’s been 17 years since the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has in­creased its rates which cur­rent­ly stand at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 0.354 a kilo­watt hour.

The Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les said af­ter sev­er­al con­sul­ta­tions across the coun­try, the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) was ready with its re­view of T&TEC rates.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny was adamant that a rate in­crease was nec­es­sary if T&TEC was to be fi­nan­cial­ly sus­tain­able.

Sev­er­al cus­tomers told Guardian Me­dia that they saw an in­crease in their light bills as they tried to stay cool dur­ing the re­cent hot spells.

One D’Abadie res­i­dent said in April her bill was $1,659.

She said the next billing cy­cle for her house­hold in June showed a cost of $1,909 and in Au­gust her bill was $2,209—$300 more.

She anx­ious­ly awaits the next bill.

This coun­try cur­rent­ly has the low­est elec­tric­i­ty rate in the re­gion. Cal­cu­lat­ing in T&T cur­ren­cy, in Ja­maica a kilo­watt-hour costs TTD2.23.

In Bar­ba­dos, us­ing lo­cal cur­ren­cy, the elec­tric­i­ty rate is TTD$1.90 and in St Vin­cent it is TTD$1.63.

A check and cal­cu­la­tion on T&TEC’s web­site showed that us­ing a 17.5 cu­bic foot re­frig­er­a­tor for 20 days at this coun­try’s rate will cost a cus­tomer $90.48.

If that re­frig­er­a­tor was plugged in Ja­maica for the same time frame, it would cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly TTD$776.04, in Bar­ba­dos TTD$661.20 and in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines TTD$567.24.

Econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan said peo­ple in oth­er Caribbean is­lands have grown ac­cus­tomed to the high elec­tric­i­ty rates for years and are of­ten pro­vid­ed with so­lar en­er­gy al­ter­na­tives to help with the costs. She added that the ad­just­ment would be se­vere for cit­i­zens in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She said that while peo­ple lo­cal­ly were aware that an in­crease could be com­ing, it would still have a neg­a­tive im­pact on peo­ple’s pock­ets.

“It is a bur­den ob­vi­ous­ly even if per­sons were to cut back on us­age—there is still the ex­pec­ta­tion that your over­all bill is go­ing to in­crease,” she said.

How­ev­er, Sage­wan said she was wor­ried about the mid­dle class who sim­ply could not meet their cur­rent ex­pens­es.

“The im­pact is go­ing to be neg­a­tive on peo­ple’s pock­et...We’ve been talk­ing about the in­fla­tion, the high cost of liv­ing and that is go­ing to fur­ther ex­ac­er­bate the cost of food, the cost of trans­porta­tion the cost of al­most every­thing,” she ex­plained.