Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) owes the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) $800 mil­lion and the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry owes TTEC $20 mil­lion, says the Op­po­si­tion UNC, which wants TTEC's rate hike re­view to be halt­ed due to the to­tal $1.4 bil­lion in to­tal debt owed to the util­i­ty by these and oth­er state agen­cies.

UNC MP Bar­ry Padarath gave the in­for­ma­tion at yes­ter­day's Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing in Port-of-Spain.

He quot­ed the fig­ures owed to T&TEC from a writ­ten re­ply giv­en by the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry in Par­lia­ment re­cent­ly. This was on a ques­tion he posed to the min­istry on the to­tal debt owed by state agen­cies to T&TEC as at May, 2023. The min­istry stat­ed this to­talled $1.4b.

Padarath not­ed the $1.4b in­clud­ed the sums owed by WASA and the ublic Util­i­ties Min­istry. He al­so said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry owed $115m and Ude­cott, which falls un­der the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice, owed $102m.

Padarath not­ed TTEC's ap­pli­ca­tion for a rate hike is be­fore the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­m­mis­sion (RIC). He said the Op­po­si­tion is send­ing a let­ter to the RIC to­day, ask­ing if the com­mis­sion has con­sid­ered such debts owed to TTEC and if these were be­ing pur­sued by Gov­ern­ment to en­sure these com­pa­nies are in a bet­ter po­si­tion to meet their costs.

Padarath not­ed that as part of the RIC's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in de­ter­min­ing the new T&TEC rates, they are to con­sid­er the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion of such com­pa­nies.

He said the Op­po­si­tion is call­ing on the RIC to note the re­sponse giv­en by the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry on the debt fig­ures owed to T&TEC by state agen­cies.

"We're call­ing on the RIC to halt (the rate re­view), as we're very much aware they've com­plet­ed the rate re­view. They have an ex­ist­ing re­la­tion­ship with the Gov­ern­ment and the Gov­ern­ment is wait­ing for the op­por­tune time to an­nounce these new rates," he said.

"But we're call­ing on both the Gov­ern­ment and the RIC to halt any move to in­crease the rates in light of this in­for­ma­tion on the $1.4 bil­lion owed to TTEC by state agen­cies."

He said the UNC will al­so seek in­for­ma­tion on how much mon­ey is owed to WASA by state agen­cies.

"We'll file that ques­tion in Par­lia­ment and al­so as a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion query to WASA," he said.

He said the chal­lenge to WASA and TTEC of be­ing "in the red" and not be­ing self-suf­fi­cient is a di­rect re­sult of state agen­cies not pay­ing their bills and the state al­so not pro­vid­ing sub­si­dies to the util­i­ties.

Padarath spec­u­lat­ed that this was be­cause Gov­ern­ment "di­rect­ly at­tempt­ed to dri­ve these state com­pa­nies in­to the ground, de­monise the work­ers, as they did with Petrotrin, in an ef­fort to close down them down and pri­va­tise the sec­tor."

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les did not re­spond to a Guardian Me­dia query on the min­istry's $20m debt to T&TEC.