RIC fulfilling legal obligations?

THE EDITOR: We all agree that efficiency saves waste, yet Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) has not had any reply to its questions submitted three weeks ago to the Regulated Industries Commission (RIC).

T&TEC is a distributor of energy. Please provide a comparative analysis of what T&TEC pays for each megawatt from each of the three separate independent energy producers.

Is Trinidad Generation Unlimited (TGU) in La Brea necessary for national energy production? Does T&TEC have any agreement to pay for “reserve capacity” of TGU and, if yes, how much is in fact being used? What is the debt owed and monthly payments on TGU? T&TEC and TGU are nationally owned and intertwined. Is the TGU debt burden driving this proposed rate increase? Why is the RIC silent on TGU?

If there a surplus of national production? How much is it and are any efforts being made to export?

The RIC has measured a doubling of system losses in Section 3.1 but has not reported on possible causes. Please elaborate.

In section 4 the RIC fails to inform, as it did in its last WASA Report (2018), on any data analysis comparing number of employees to number of customers, as per international standards. Is T&TEC overstaffed? What percentage are contract workers? What percentage are unionised?

Has the RIC done any comparative analysis of T&TEC management procedures as a cause for accelerating inefficiencies and losses?

What percentage of T&TEC debt is owed by government itself?

Shouldn’t the RIC in its section 5.1.2.2, “Uncontrollable costs”, comment on procurement deficiencies that may be accountable for hundreds of millions of inflated purchase values? Please provide us with the procurement procedures of T&TEC.

Please provide a breakdown of expenditure of wages, goods and services. Has the RIC sought technical expertise to determine a private/public sector comparison of the cost of goods and services?

The RIC has legislative obligations as outlined in the Regulated Industries Commission Act, Chap 54:73, Part II, The Regulated Industries Commission, Establishment of Commission, section 6, page 8. Therefore, has the RIC carried out studies of efficiency and economy of operation and/or performance and published the results thereof?

The legislation permits the RIC to “facilitate competition between service providers where competition is possible and desirable.” Has the RIC examined other markets where privately-generated renewable energy can be sold back into the national grid? Has the RIC examined the benefits of private sector renewable energy generation such as in Barbados? Has the RIC considered the benefits of incentivising renewable energy as one the ways to break an inefficient monopoly and reduce the distribution burden from T&TEC?

Are there any independently successful private sector members to the board? Has private sector co-management been considered?

T&TEC must firstly function with accountability, efficiency and transparency and currently it is not. Until we can get a clearer understanding with reliable data, it appears that citizens are being forced to bail out T&TEC mismanagement, corruption and misuse of public funds.

GARY ABOUD

corporate secretary, FFOS