Princes Town MP, Bar­ry Padarath has slammed the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) for what he called be­ing agents of the gov­ern­ment in an at­tempt to pass on the bur­den and debts of T&TEC to cit­i­zens.

In a me­dia re­lease Padarath in­di­cat­ed that in the lead-up to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion, the Op­po­si­tion Leader warned the pop­u­la­tion that T&TEC rate hikes were com­ing as soon as the elec­tion was over.

Padarath added, "The col­lu­sion be­tween the gov­ern­ment and their pup­pets in state in­sti­tu­tions was glar­ing in light of to­day's de­vel­op­ments."

The Op­po­si­tion Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties de­scribed the pre­sen­ta­tion this morn­ing as a case of the blind lead­ing the blind. He stat­ed that "the pre­sen­ta­tion and the pre­sen­ters left the pop­u­la­tion with many more ques­tions than an­swers since the tiered sys­tem was not prop­er­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed and at many times, both the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and the Chair­man seemed con­fused."

Padarath said this was ei­ther a tragedy or de­lib­er­ate.

Padarath said that the main take­away from the an­nounce­ments this morn­ing was that the billing cy­cle will now be month­ly, cit­i­zens’ elec­tric­i­ty bills were now go­ing up be­tween 16 to 64 per cent and the very mea­sures the Op­po­si­tion and oth­ers fought against in the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions were be­ing in­sti­tut­ed.

The MP said while small busi­ness­es may find the com­mer­cial rates a bit favourable to them, he asked who was go­ing to pro­tect the con­sumer?

"Who is go­ing to en­sure that busi­ness­es who re­ceive the re­duc­tion will still not pass on ad­di­tion­al costs to cus­tomers?"

Padarath said he was al­so deeply dis­turbed by the ra­tio­nale pro­vid­ed by the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties for the new rates.