The wait is over.

To­day, the pub­lic will know ex­act­ly how much more they will have to pay for elec­tric­i­ty from the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), fol­low­ing an an­nounce­ment al­most three years ago that it had com­menced price re­views for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

Af­ter launch­ing pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions in Jan­u­ary of this year, the com­mis­sion re­port­ed in Au­gust that it had held 15 re­gion­al con­sul­ta­tions across the coun­try, met with more than 22 spe­cial in­ter­est groups, and re­ceived com­ments from nu­mer­ous oth­er stake­hold­ers and pri­vate cit­i­zens on its Draft De­ter­mi­na­tion.

Now that the process is over, the RIC will make the long-await­ed an­nounce­ment to the coun­try at a 10 am me­dia con­fer­ence at the Hilton Trinidad in Port-of-Spain.

Yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les point­ed out that “things have changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly” since the last time the lo­cal elec­tric­i­ty rate in­creased 17 years ago, while strong­ly hint­ing at the pend­ing hike in do­mes­tic rates.

“If T&TEC does not have a rate in­crease, then Trinidad and To­ba­go is go­ing to be fac­ing very, very soon, not too far from now, the prospects of a util­i­ty com­pa­ny that can­not pro­vide an ad­e­quate and re­li­able ser­vice ...

“We cer­tain­ly can­not jeop­ar­dise the life of the pub­lic in this way. It will be high­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble if we al­low that to hap­pen and we can­not al­low a sit­u­a­tion to oc­cur where the econ­o­my can be placed in per­il if we don’t al­low the util­i­ty com­pa­ny to col­lect the rates for its ser­vices,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

With­out show­ing its full hand, the RIC has al­ready dis­closed some of its pro­pos­als.

First­ly, con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en for bills to be is­sued month­ly rather than bi-month­ly.

Dur­ing the re­cent con­sul­ta­tions, then RIC ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Glenn Khan al­so showed how cal­cu­la­tions of bills may change.

He said the pro­pos­al was for T&TEC cus­tomers to be charged 28 cents for the first 20 kWh, 40 cents for the next 200-700 kWh, 54 cents for be­tween 701-1400 kWh and 68 cents for over 1400 kWh.

Khan said cur­rent­ly, this would see some­one who con­sumes 200 kWh pay­ing on av­er­age $65 every two months. The new rate would see a charge of $79 every two months.

Khan added that if 800 kWh is used over two months, the con­sumer now pays $267. The new pro­posed price will see a charge of $322.

Dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion process, sev­er­al cit­i­zens re­ject­ed the pro­posed in­crease, say­ing now is not the time for fur­ther eco­nom­ic bur­dens. At sev­er­al of these con­sul­ta­tions, the cho­rus of ob­jec­tions was led by mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les yes­ter­day said T&TEC owes the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) close to $5 bil­lion and ques­tioned where peo­ple op­posed to the in­crease ex­pect that mon­ey to come from.

“Where is T&TEC go­ing to get five bil­lion to pay the NGC? Are they say­ing the Gov­ern­ment should find the re­sources? Find five bil­lion dol­lars to pay to the NGC? That is the ques­tion we need to ask, where is T&TEC go­ing to get the mon­ey if we don’t have a rate re­view, where is T&TEC go­ing to get five bil­lion dol­lars to pay the NGC to get gas to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty? It’s as sim­ple as that,” Gon­za­les posit­ed.

How­ev­er, Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath said the UNC was re­new­ing its call for Gov­ern­ment to re­ject any in­creased rates against the back­drop of prop­er­ty tax, un­em­ploy­ment and high cost of liv­ing.

“The long and short of this sit­u­a­tion is that the Gov­ern­ment must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the state of both WASA (Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty) and T&TEC due to their mis­man­age­ment. For eight years, they have ap­point­ed the com­mis­sion­ers to the board of both WASA and T&TEC, their op­er­a­tives gave di­rec­tion based on gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, the Gov­ern­ment can­not sep­a­rate them­selves from that. Their mis­man­age­ment, in­ef­fi­cien­cy and in­com­pe­tence can­not be passed on to the con­sumer,” Padarath said.

The shad­ow Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment should not have al­lowed T&TEC’s debt to reach this lev­el. “Mr Gon­za­les is play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness. Mr Gon­za­les needs to ex­plain to the pop­u­la­tion why so many state en­ter­pris­es, min­istries and state com­pa­nies owe both T&TEC and WASA bil­lions of dol­lars.

“This has ac­cu­mu­lat­ed an­nu­al­ly de­spite the Gov­ern­ment be­ing in pow­er for over eight years. In­stead of deal­ing with the chal­lenges of the util­i­ty com­pa­nies, the Gov­ern­ment it­self has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to run­ning the util­i­ty com­pa­nies in­to the ground. These debts owed by the State in the bil­lions have af­fect­ed the op­er­a­tions of the util­i­ty com­pa­nies neg­a­tive­ly,” Padarath ar­gued.

He said the UNC would con­tin­ue to re­sist any in­creas­es, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to pay­ing more for a ser­vice that was some­times less than re­li­able.