Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les says it is un­like­ly the Gov­ern­ment will im­ple­ment an in­crease to the pub­lic’s elec­tric­i­ty bill, at least for 2025. But he de­nies the Gov­ern­ment is hold­ing its hand due to fears of pub­lic back­lash at the polls in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) 69th an­niver­sary at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les was asked about the sta­tus of the pro­posed rate in­crease that was a rec­om­men­da­tion of the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC).

“The mat­ter is still be­fore the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee; I don’t think that this mat­ter would ever progress dur­ing the course of this year. I think we have a lot more that we are fo­cus­ing on at this time,” Gon­za­les re­spond­ed. In Oc­to­ber 2023, the RIC, af­ter months of pub­lic and pri­vate con­sul­ta­tions, pro­posed a res­i­den­tial in­crease rang­ing from 15 to 64 per cent, an in­crease for com­mer­cial cus­tomers from 37 to 51 per cent, in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers will see an in­crease be­tween 58 to 72 per cent while E class in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers can see a whop­ping in­crease be­tween 126 to 199 per cent. It al­so rec­om­mend­ed that cus­tomers be billed month­ly as op­posed to every two months. The re­port went be­fore the Cab­i­net in No­vem­ber 2023.

Some mem­bers of the pub­lic and the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ve­he­ment­ly re­ject­ed the in­crease, say­ing the cost of liv­ing is al­ready un­bear­able.

Guardian Me­dia asked Gon­za­les yes­ter­day if the Gov­ern­ment is hes­i­tat­ing to im­ple­ment the com­mis­sion’s rec­om­men­da­tion due to fears that it could seal the PNM’s fate in the next gen­er­al elec­tion. How­ev­er, he said that was not how the par­ty op­er­ates.

“The PNM does not run the coun­try by think­ing about elec­tions. I can tell you that I have been part of this Gov­ern­ment for five years, and when we sit to dis­cuss mat­ters, I have nev­er heard from my col­leagues and the Prime Min­is­ter say­ing that if we do things that are right for this coun­try, it will un­der­mine our po­lit­i­cal chances at the polls,” he ex­plained.

Gon­za­les added, “So, the rate re­view process, we gave the RIC all of the re­sources to un­der­take its work; they have pro­duced their re­port, it has been sent to the Cab­i­net, and the con­sid­er­a­tion is not about elec­tions, it’s about do­ing what is right for the coun­try at this point in time.”

In 2023, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) Chair­man told Guardian Me­dia that an up­ward ad­just­ment was nec­es­sary for the util­i­ty com­pa­ny to main­tain a de­pend­able sup­ply to its cus­tomers. T&TEC blamed its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion on the ab­sence of a rate re­view by its reg­u­la­tor since 2009. Mean­while, Gon­za­les has pre­vi­ous­ly jus­ti­fied the need for the rate in­crease, say­ing that the state-owned T&TEC was heav­i­ly in­debt­ed to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

In No­vem­ber 2024, Gon­za­les told the Par­lia­ment that T&TEC owes NGC around $6.16 bil­lion for the sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas. When the RIC host­ed na­tion­wide pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on the pro­posed elec­tric­i­ty hike, po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists and sup­port­ers of the UNC used those ses­sions to vo­cif­er­ous­ly de­nounce the move.

They were ac­cused of be­ing dis­rup­tors at the con­sul­ta­tions with RIC chair­man Dawn Cal­len­der, who had to be es­cort­ed off the stage by po­lice of­fi­cers at one par­tic­u­lar meet­ing at the Cen­tre Point Mall, Ch­agua­nas.

Cal­len­der sub­se­quent­ly said that her mem­bers felt threat­ened af­ter the ac­tivists be­gan drag­ging a cof­fin around the hall, threat­ened to light a flam­ma­ble liq­uid, and threat­ened the mem­bers of the head ta­ble. Fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said that be­cause of the lat­est con­duct of sup­port­ers of the Op­po­si­tion, the RIC of­fi­cials have writ­ten to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds.