Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior cit­i­zens are ask­ing the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) to make bill pay­ments eas­i­er if in fact the util­i­ty is mov­ing to a month­ly billing sys­tem.

The re­quest was made by the T&T As­so­ci­a­tion for Re­tired Per­sons (TTARP) through the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) when the two met on Thurs­day to dis­cuss the pro­posed rate hike for elec­tric­i­ty.

“They will raise this with T&TEC and pro­pose a ded­i­cat­ed line for se­nior cit­i­zens at all T&TEC pay­ment cen­tres,” said ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of TTARP Reynold Coop­er.

Coop­er said the as­so­ci­a­tion used Thurs­day's meet­ing to im­press up­on the RIC how dif­fi­cult a rate in­crease will be on its mem­bers, many of whom de­pend on their pen­sion cheques to get by.

Since the RIC an­nounced the rate in­crease, TTARP had ex­pressed con­cerns not on­ly on a fi­nan­cial lev­el but the in­con­ve­nience it will cause for their mem­bers who have lim­it­ed mo­bil­i­ty.

But Coop­er said they were pleased fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s meet­ing.

“The meet­ing was very in­for­ma­tive and we were able to raise our con­cerns on be­half of se­nior cit­i­zens who have to en­dure an­oth­er price in­crease in the near fu­ture,” he said.

Coop­er said they were al­so pleased to know that re­bates for se­nior cit­i­zens was re­cent­ly in­creased from 25 per cent to 35 per cent for those with bills un­der $300.

This was men­tioned in the 2021/2022 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said last week that 200,000 house­holds ben­e­fit from that pro­gramme.

The RIC an­nounced that there is al­so the Util­i­ties As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (UAP).

The UAP pays 100 per cent of the bill, up to a max­i­mum con­sump­tion of 600kWh bi-month­ly.

Ben­e­fi­cia­ries must be in re­ceipt of so­cial as­sis­tance, such as pub­lic as­sis­tance, dis­abil­i­ty grants, se­nior cit­i­zens pen­sion or oth­er pen­sions, and must sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

Coop­er said TTARP re­quest­ed that the RIC con­duct more pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes where all cit­i­zens can be ed­u­cat­ed on these fa­cil­i­ties.

Mean­while, the RIC said all views from the meet­ing were well doc­u­ment­ed and will be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered in the RIC’s Fi­nal De­ter­mi­na­tion for the Elec­tric­i­ty Trans­mis­sion and Dis­tri­b­u­tion Sec­tor.

RIC ex­ec­u­tives al­so pre­sent­ed TTARP with en­er­gy ef­fi­cient LED bulbs to be dis­trib­uted to its mem­ber­ship.

The first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion will be held on Jan­u­ary 17 at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, in Ma­coya.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Thurs­day, RIC ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Glenn Khan en­cour­aged peo­ple to walk with their elec­tric­i­ty bills.

He said, “We have some­thing like a bill cal­cu­la­tor, so if you walk with your bill, we’re go­ing to demon­strate to you what the ef­fect of the new prices will be and com­pare it to the old prices and es­sen­tial­ly peo­ple will re­alise that the price change and the bill im­pact will be small, it may be $8 to $10 to $15 in some cas­es for peo­ple at the low­er end.”

Those, how­ev­er, who are not on the low­er end risk pay­ing up to 64 per cent more.

RIC chair­man Dawn Cal­len­der said the key word for those cus­tomers is “con­ser­va­tion.”

“We have peo­ple who live very lux­u­ri­ous lives in T&T, the rate in­crease is prob­a­bly not go­ing to both­er them one way or the oth­er and those would be the per­sons on the high­er end on the scale, they may be fac­ing the 64 per cent in­crease but our mes­sage to them is re­al­ly about con­ser­va­tion, we are fac­ing the glob­al warm­ing is­sue as a coun­try we have our own tar­gets and we want to en­cour­age our cit­i­zens to con­sume elec­tric­i­ty in a way to as­sist in meet­ing those tar­gets,” Cal­len­der said

Fol­low­ing the meet­ing in Ma­coya, the RIC will then go the Ari­ma Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Jan­u­ary 19.