AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

De­spite a warn­ing from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance on its im­pend­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion, nei­ther the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) nor the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties know ex­act­ly when the pub­lic will have to pay more for elec­tric­i­ty.

This is large­ly be­cause the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) is still in the process of com­plet­ing the price re­view process for T&TEC.

Yes­ter­day, T&TEC gen­er­al man­ag­er Curvis Fran­cois told Guardian Me­dia, “What they (RIC) in­di­cat­ed is that they have to sub­mit it (the fi­nal re­port) to the Gov­ern­ment and I think they may have done it al­ready, I am not sure, but the Gov­ern­ment will ba­si­cal­ly in­di­cate to us through our line min­istry when­ev­er that time comes for the de­ter­mi­na­tion to be put in­to ef­fect.”

Fran­cois did not want to spec­u­late on any pos­si­ble time­lines but said what­ev­er is rec­om­mend­ed and ap­proved will be im­ple­ment­ed soon af­ter.

“It is ur­gent be­cause cur­rent­ly, for every kilo­watt-hour that we sell, we ac­tu­al­ly lose rough­ly about 13 cents,” Fran­cois ex­plained.

Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, dur­ing his 2024 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, ex­plained that T&TEC could not even pay for nat­ur­al gas at cur­rent rates, and this costs the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny over $500 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly. Com­pound­ing that was a debt of $1.4 bil­lion owed to T&TEC by the State, which was re­vealed by Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les in May this year.

Fran­cois said the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion from the RIC may al­ready be in Min­is­ter Gon­za­les’ hands for ap­proval.

How­ev­er, con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said, “They (RIC) have not no­ti­fied me. All I was told is that the re­view has reached an ad­vanced stage.”

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day asked the RIC when the process would be com­plet­ed.

It re­spond­ed, “The RIC con­tin­ues to work on the com­ple­tion of its Price Re­view Process for T&TEC, as it con­tin­ues to en­sure the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion doc­u­ment is ful­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of its ex­ten­sive re­search, com­ments re­ceived and com­pre­hen­sive re­view of all in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed. At this time, the RIC does not have a spe­cif­ic date for the com­ple­tion of this ex­er­cise and will in­form the pub­lic when it is ready to re­lease its fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion for the elec­tric­i­ty trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor for the pe­ri­od 2023-2027.”

This an­swer was sim­i­lar to the one giv­en by the RIC in Au­gust.

The RIC said the doc­u­ment will there­after be sent to T&TEC, which will be guid­ed by the RIC’s de­ci­sions.

It al­so re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia that wa­ter rates were al­so un­der scruti­ny.

“The RIC is fo­cus­ing on com­plet­ing the T&TEC price re­view while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly do­ing read­ings and re­search on the wa­ter and waste­water sec­tors,” it stat­ed.

The RIC made pub­lic its pro­posed changes to T&TEC rates in De­cem­ber 2022, and the in­creas­es ranged from 15 per cent to as high as 64 per cent for res­i­den­tial cus­tomers based on kilo­watt con­sump­tion. Com­mer­cial cus­tomers faced per­cent­age in­creas­es rang­ing from 51 per cent to 63 per cent.

Since then, the RIC has held 15 con­sul­ta­tions through­out the coun­try. Peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed fierce­ly re­ject­ed the move, say­ing the cost of liv­ing was al­ready high.

Union dis­ap­point­ed

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) echoed con­cerns about rate hikes yes­ter­day, say­ing it was dis­ap­point­ed with what was said by Min­is­ter Im­bert on pub­lic util­i­ties.

Gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ozzi War­wick said, “We thought the Gov­ern­ment would have an­nounced that they were go­ing to re­view the oner­ous pow­er pur­chase agree­ment that they have with these in­de­pen­dent pro­duc­ers of elec­tric­i­ty. So that these in­de­pen­dent pro­duc­ers pay NGC for the gas that they are us­ing. The oth­er thing we hoped we would have heard is the Gov­ern­ment will­ing to do good on the monies that they owe T&TEC, around $1.3B. If those were ad­dressed, then T&TEC would have been in a more favourable fi­nan­cial po­si­tion to de­liv­er on its man­date to pro­vide a pub­lic good for this coun­try.”

War­wick said Im­bert need­ed to be re­mind­ed that a util­i­ty ser­vice should be peo­ple and not prof­it-cen­tred.

“Why are you in­creas­ing on or­di­nary peo­ple...,” he posit­ed.

He added that not enough was said about the strug­gles of T&TEC’s work­ers.

“We would have thought we would have heard that the min­is­ter would have an­nounced what is be­ing put in place for the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of these work­ers who are clear­ly risk­ing their lives to en­sure a re­li­able sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty, and this goes for the WASA and TTPOST work­ers,” War­wick said.

How­ev­er, in the 2024 State En­ter­pris­es In­vest­ment Pro­gramme, $69.22m has been al­lo­cat­ed for up­grad­ing T&TEC’s se­cu­ri­ty and pro­tec­tion in­fra­struc­ture while $98.12m is for up­grad­ing equip­ment and fa­cil­i­ties.