Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is cau­tion­ing cit­i­zens that while the Gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed there may be no elec­tric­i­ty rate hike this year, an in­crease could be on the hori­zon should the ad­min­is­tra­tion se­cure an­oth­er term in of­fice.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, OW­TU chief ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Ozzi War­wick reaf­firmed the union’s stance that elec­tric­i­ty rates should not be in­creased. Just last week, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get ar­gued that a foren­sic au­dit in­to the con­tract sys­tem at the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) could elim­i­nate the need for any rate ad­just­ment. Ro­get in­sist­ed that if the Gov­ern­ment act­ed on such find­ings, it could fund the util­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions and set­tle out­stand­ing debts with­out pass­ing the bur­den on­to con­sumers.

Over the week­end, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les stat­ed that an elec­tric­i­ty rate in­crease was un­like­ly—at least for 2025. He dis­missed claims that the Gov­ern­ment was de­lib­er­ate­ly post­pon­ing any hike to avoid pub­lic back­lash ahead of the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

How­ev­er, the OW­TU re­mains scep­ti­cal, as­sert­ing that elec­toral con­sid­er­a­tions are pre­cise­ly why the Gov­ern­ment is hold­ing back.

“The pop­u­la­tion must not be fooled, as they have full in­ten­tion to in­crease elec­tric­i­ty rates if they are re­turned to of­fice. We think it has every­thing to do with the elec­tions,” War­wick said.

In Oc­to­ber 2023, the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) pro­posed an in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty rates, rang­ing from a 7.7 per cent rise for res­i­den­tial cus­tomers to as much as 17 per cent for some com­mer­cial con­sumers. The pro­pos­al out­lined grad­ual in­creas­es to be im­ple­ment­ed an­nu­al­ly from 2023 to 2027.

Among the pro­posed changes was a shift to a tiered billing sys­tem, along with a fixed month­ly fee of $7.50—up from the pre­vi­ous $6 bi-month­ly charge. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, cus­tomers would be­gin re­ceiv­ing month­ly elec­tric­i­ty bills rather than bi-month­ly state­ments. A new dis­con­nec­tion and re­con­nec­tion fee of $150 was al­so in­clud­ed in the pro­pos­al.

By De­cem­ber, the Cab­i­net had re­quest­ed “fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion” from the RIC re­gard­ing the pro­posed in­creas­es, and the mat­ter re­mains un­der re­view by the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee.

T&TEC has main­tained that an in­crease is es­sen­tial to sus­tain­ing a re­li­able elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply, high­light­ing its mount­ing fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions. The com­pa­ny’s debt stood at $9.32 bil­lion, in­clud­ing sig­nif­i­cant ar­rears owed to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny.