Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

The to­tal in­debt­ed­ness of state en­ti­ties to the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion as at May 31, 2023, was $1,473,958,560.19.

This was stat­ed in a writ­ten re­ply from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions which were cir­cu­lat­ed in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

The re­ply stat­ed that T&TEC had giv­en the in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter.

Gon­za­les’ re­ply stat­ed that T&TEC had al­so ad­vised that the to­tal debt re­paid to T&TEC by state en­ti­ties over the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 3, 2023, to June 5, 2023, was $263,794,822.09

Gon­za­les added, “The Com­mis­sion has a Debt Col­lec­tion Pol­i­cy, the goal of which is to de­crease the vol­ume and amount of re­ceiv­ables and in­crease the rate of col­lec­tion.

“The pol­i­cy pro­vides for ag­gres­sive fol­low-up on all ac­counts in ar­rears and es­tab­lish­es a clear­ly de­fined process for col­lect­ing past due ac­counts, be­gin­ning when an ac­count first be­comes delin­quent and con­tin­u­ing un­til the debt is col­lect­ed.”

Specif­i­cal­ly with re­spect to the pub­lic sec­tor, he said the fol­low­ing are the key mea­sures un­der­tak­en to re­duce the debt owed:

• Every Pub­lic Sec­tor agency with sig­nif­i­cant ar­rears is writ­ten to and ad­vised of the amount owed on their light and pow­er ac­counts;

• Meet­ings are arranged with the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, the Chief Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer and/or the Com­mer­cial Man­ag­er T&TEC and the very large pub­lic debtors to se­cure pay­ment or ar­rive at a pay­ment plan;

• There is col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties to en­sure that ad­e­quate bud­getary arrange­ments are made for treat­ing with such ex­pen­di­tures.

Gon­za­les said, “There will be an in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of these mea­sures go­ing for­ward.”

PM’s trips’ costs...

An­oth­er writ­ten re­ply per­tained to queries to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on the fol­low­ing:

(a) The names of all of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing staff and se­cu­ri­ty, who ac­com­pa­nied the Prime Min­is­ter on his re­cent trip to Bar­ba­dos dur­ing May 5-8, 2023;

(b) Cost of the over­seas trav­el, in­clu­sive of ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion, meals, ground trans­port, for the Prime Min­is­ter and any oth­er of­fi­cials list­ed and any oth­er re­lat­ed costs in­curred by Gov­ern­ment.

The re­ply stat­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter trav­elled to Bar­ba­dos for the pe­ri­od May 5-8, 2023, on per­son­al busi­ness.

His se­cu­ri­ty de­tail con­sist­ed of one of­fi­cer, Sergeant Julius Fran­cois. The cost as­so­ci­at­ed with Sgt Fran­cois’ trav­el was $40,571 and no oth­er ad­di­tion­al cost was in­curred by Gov­ern­ment

Re­ply was al­so giv­en to a query to the Prime Min­is­ter on his trip to the US over May 11-17.

The per­sons who ac­com­pa­nied the Prime Min­is­ter were, Sharon Clark-Row­ley, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, Kirk Fran­cois (In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions and Pro­to­col Of­fi­cer), Ab­by Braith­waite (Deputy Press Sec­re­tary), Sgt Carl Patrice (Spe­cial Branch Of­fi­cer) and Cor­po­ral Ran­dall Rod­ney (Spe­cial Branch Of­fi­cer).

The ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture in­curred in as­so­ci­a­tion with the of­fi­cial trav­el for the del­e­ga­tion was TT$444,757.73 and an ad­di­tion­al cost of flight in­sur­ance in the sum of $2,384.26 was paid in re­la­tion to the del­e­ga­tion.