RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice David Ab­du­lah is call­ing on cit­i­zens to sign a pe­ti­tion and say ‘no’ to the pro­posed in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty rates which will re­sult in more mon­ey be­ing paid on light bills.

Ab­du­lah led a protest yes­ter­day morn­ing out­side the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties in Port-of-Spain. A few MSJ sup­port­ers al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed.

“We are re­launch­ing a na­tion­al pe­ti­tion against the T&TEC rat­ing in­crease. In De­cem­ber we is­sued a state­ment call­ing on peo­ple to tell the Gov­ern­ment ‘no’ to the T&TEC rate in­crease.

“We want to bring back in­to the pub­lic’s mind that we are say­ing no to a rate in­crease, al­though the RIC sub­mit­ted its re­port to the Gov­ern­ment many months ago this mat­ter is be­fore the Cab­i­net. We have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get the Gov­ern­ment to not im­ple­ment the rate in­crease as pro­posed by the RIC,” he said.

Ab­du­lah said no oth­er al­ter­na­tives have been pro­vid­ed and peo­ple are be­ing made to ac­cept the rate hike.

“We are say­ing there is a way oth­er than in­creas­ing the rates for peo­ple to pay for T&TEC to bal­ance its books and that is to be able to save the 250 mil­lion dol­lars a year as a re­sult of the pow­er pur­chase agree­ments that T&TEC has with Pow­er­gen and with Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Lim­it­ed and with Trin­i­ty Pow­er,” he said.

In Oc­to­ber last year, the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) pro­posed new elec­tric­i­ty rates af­ter months of con­sul­ta­tion. But there is still no word on when the in­creas­es have been ac­cept­ed or ap­proved by Gov­ern­ment.

When asked about the is­sue in Jan­u­ary, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the rate ad­just­ments were “still be­ing analysed by a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee.”

As a re­sult, the in­creased elec­tric­i­ty rates are yet to take ef­fect as the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (TTEC) must in­form cus­tomers about the rate changes 21 days be­fore they are im­ple­ment­ed.

The RIC pro­posed res­i­den­tial rate in­creas­es rang­ing from 15 to 64 per cent and be­tween 37 and 51 per cent for com­mer­cial cus­tomers. For in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers, the pro­posed in­creas­es are be­tween 58 and 72 per cent, while E-class in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers could see an in­crease of be­tween 199 to 126 per cent.

In ad­di­tion, it was pro­posed that T&TEC switch to a month­ly billing cy­cle rather than every two months.

Ef­forts to con­tact Min­is­ter Gon­za­les for com­ment yes­ter­day were fu­tile.