Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day is de­scrib­ing the hike in elec­tric­i­ty rates as a cru­el act by the Gov­ern­ment. He said the Gov­ern­ment had be­come deaf to the pub­lic's needs of the al­ready fi­nan­cial­ly trou­bled pop­u­la­tion.

Pan­day made the com­ment in a news re­lease yes­ter­day. He said the in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty rates was heart­less of the Gov­ern­ment be­cause the na­tion had al­ready been bur­dened by the 300 per cent rise in food prices and a third of the pop­u­la­tion was liv­ing be­low the pover­ty line. He said he was aware that the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) had made its rec­om­men­da­tion for a price in­crease. He said, how­ev­er, it was up to the Gov­ern­ment to ad­here to these rec­om­men­da­tions.

Pan­day said he was dis­ap­point­ed that the Gov­ern­ment had cho­sen to fol­low the RIC rec­om­men­da­tion. Pan­day said, "The tim­ing for such an in­crease is just not right. It is a slap in the face to a coun­try which is cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a fi­nan­cial cri­sis, be­cause of the glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn." He said the Gov­ern­ment had not tak­en in­to ac­count the rip­ple ef­fect the in­crease would cause, like a fur­ther hike in food prices as man­u­fac­tures would need to put out more mon­ey for elec­tric­i­ty. Pan­day said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to recog­nise its so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to achieve and main­tain a sta­ble eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) said the in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty rates would take ef­fect from Sep­tem­ber 1. It said the rates for res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers would be raised by one per cent per unit (kWh). Street light­ing cus­tomers would al­so ex­pe­ri­ence a two per cent in­crease.