Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Pro­duc­er & Re­porter

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte has ac­cused the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) of wrong­ly clas­si­fy­ing the Break­fast Shed (Femmes de Chalet) in Port-of-Spain as an in­dus­tri­al cus­tomer, re­sult­ing in ten­ants be­ing over­billed for elec­tric­i­ty for years.

Le Hunte said the fa­cil­i­ty was placed in the D2 medi­um in­dus­tri­al cat­e­go­ry in­stead of the D1 small in­dus­tri­al class, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased month­ly charges. He es­ti­mat­ed that ten­ants paid an av­er­age of $13,000–$14,000 a month, when their bills should have been clos­er to $3,000–$5,000.

“Rather than the Break­fast Shed ow­ing T&TEC $280,000, in­clud­ing $80,000 in in­ter­est, be­cause of that wrong as­sess­ment, done by two state agen­cies, who should have known bet­ter, UDe­Cott and T&TEC, I don’t want to get in­to the blame game, but these in­di­vid­u­als were over­charged elec­tric­i­ty over $1.8M,” he claimed.

The Break­fast Shed ten­ants closed their doors on Oc­to­ber 30th in a dis­pute over $1.8 mil­lion in un­paid rent, claim­ing they were forced out of the fa­cil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, the chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of T&T (UDe­Cott), Shankar Bidaisee, while con­firm­ing the out­stand­ing rent, said they were not evict­ed.

Le Hunte, now a fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant as­sist­ing the ten­ants, said the is­sue with TTEC dat­ed back to 2006, when it was first made aware of the is­sue. He said the mis­clas­si­fi­ca­tion could have been cor­rect­ed ei­ther by rewiring the build­ing to match its prop­er ca­pac­i­ty, or by TTEC re­duc­ing the max­i­mum load ca­pac­i­ty from 216 to 51 kilo­volt-am­peres (kVA)—the sim­pler and less cost­ly op­tion.

“Now at 51 kVA it’s still very much in ex­cess of what they were go­ing to do, or utilise, but at least their bills would have come down to around $5,000 a month,” he said, es­ti­mat­ing that T&TEC over­billed the ten­ants by about $360,000 in to­tal.

Guardian Me­dia was speak­ing to Le Hunte af­ter his meet­ing with the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion’s (RIC) Dr Michelle Sa­landy yes­ter­day, at its of­fice on Queen Janelle Com­mis­siong Street, Port-of-Spain.

Le Hunte said the RIC may meet with T&TEC ear­ly next week, and he ex­pect­ed the mat­ter to be re­solved by the end of the week.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, T&TEC Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er Annabelle Bras­nell said the com­mis­sion did not com­ment on cus­tomer ac­counts, but said checks would be made.

The ten­ants are al­so su­ing UDe­Cott and its chair and CEO, Tam­i­ca Charles, for al­leged­ly shut­ting down the fa­cil­i­ty un­law­ful­ly and break­ing what they say were es­tab­lished promis­es to them.

At­tor­ney Ken­neth Munroe Brown sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter on Sep­tem­ber 29th on the ven­dors’ be­half.