No policy, no records: T&TEC probes controversial protected list

AKASH SAMA­ROO
Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) says it has sought le­gal ad­vice over the ex­is­tence of a con­tro­ver­sial “pro­tect­ed list” of cus­tomers shield­ed from the nor­mal dis­con­nec­tion process for un­paid elec­tric­i­ty bills, as it ad­mit­ted there is no doc­u­ment­ed pol­i­cy, pro­ce­dure or record ex­plain­ing how cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als and pri­vate com­pa­nies came to be in­clud­ed on the list.

In a state­ment is­sued on to­day, T&TEC con­firmed that the list ex­ists but said it is cur­rent­ly un­aware of how sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als and pri­vate-sec­tor en­ti­ties were added be­cause no sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, board ap­proval or for­mal cri­te­ria can be found.

“T&TEC has sought le­gal ad­vice on this mat­ter and will be guid­ed by same,” the com­mis­sion said, not­ing that any pol­i­cy di­rec­tion may ul­ti­mate­ly in­volve the Pres­i­dent act­ing on the ad­vice of Cab­i­net un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Elec­tric­i­ty Act.

The dis­clo­sure comes af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised con­cerns in Par­lia­ment about the ex­is­tence of what she de­scribed as a pro­tect­ed list of cus­tomers whose elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply was not dis­con­nect­ed de­spite out­stand­ing ar­rears.

In its state­ment, T&TEC ac­knowl­edged that a pro­tect­ed list had long been main­tained with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the com­mis­sion, the list was orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity of ser­vice for crit­i­cal na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment min­istries and de­part­ments, state en­ter­pris­es, pub­lic au­thor­i­ties and for­eign em­bassies.

How­ev­er, the com­mis­sion said that be­tween 2015 and 2025 the list was ex­pand­ed to in­clude gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and cer­tain pri­vate com­pa­nies. It said there is now no pub­lished pol­i­cy ex­plain­ing that ex­pan­sion and no doc­u­men­ta­tion de­tail­ing how those ad­di­tions were made.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there is no pub­lished pol­i­cy, pro­ce­dure or cri­te­ria per­tain­ing to the pro­tect­ed list,” T&TEC stat­ed. “There is no doc­u­men­ta­tion or record as to how the in­di­vid­u­als and pri­vate com­pa­nies who now ap­pear on the list were added to it. There is no Board minute per­tain­ing to same.”

The is­sue has trig­gered a po­lit­i­cal firestorm, with cur­rent and for­mer pub­lic of­fi­cials of­fer­ing sharply dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the list’s pur­pose.

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has de­fend­ed the prac­tice, ar­gu­ing that the list was not de­signed to ex­empt cus­tomers from pay­ing their bills but rather func­tioned as an in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tive tool for mon­i­tor­ing high-pro­file ac­counts. Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, the list in­clud­ed min­is­ters, judges and diplo­mats and al­lowed T&TEC to con­tact those cus­tomers if un­usu­al ac­tiv­i­ty or po­ten­tial dis­con­nec­tion is­sues arose.

Gon­za­les main­tained that cus­tomers on the list con­tin­ued to re­ceive bills and re­mained sub­ject to T&TEC’s pay­ment re­quire­ments. He al­so said that in­di­vid­u­als whose ac­counts were flagged were gen­er­al­ly un­aware of their in­clu­sion be­cause the process was han­dled in­ter­nal­ly by the com­mis­sion.

Gon­za­les fur­ther chal­lenged claims that the list pro­vid­ed pref­er­en­tial treat­ment and au­tho­rised the re­lease of his own T&TEC billing records, in­sist­ing he had nev­er re­ceived spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion dur­ing his tenure as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

The con­tro­ver­sy deep­ened af­ter for­mer prime min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley pub­licly re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that he ben­e­fit­ed from the arrange­ment. Row­ley de­nied be­ing on what has been de­scribed as a “se­cret list” and dis­put­ed sug­ges­tions that he re­ceived pro­tec­tion from dis­con­nec­tion for un­paid bills.

T&TEC’s lat­est state­ment does not iden­ti­fy any of the in­di­vid­u­als or com­pa­nies cur­rent­ly on the list, nor does it in­di­cate whether those cus­tomers re­main pro­tect­ed from dis­con­nec­tion.

But the com­mis­sion ref­er­enced Sec­tion 5(1) of the Elec­tric­i­ty Act, which per­mits the Pres­i­dent to give T&TEC di­rec­tions of a gen­er­al pol­i­cy na­ture in mat­ters af­fect­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est. T&TEC sug­gest­ed that pro­vi­sion may be rel­e­vant as it re­views the fu­ture of the pro­tect­ed list.

T&TEC sought to re­as­sure the pub­lic that it re­mains com­mit­ted to treat­ing all cus­tomers fair­ly.

The com­mis­sion said it had tak­en note of strong pub­lic sen­ti­ment sur­round­ing the is­sue and reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ple of equal­i­ty of treat­ment.

“T&TEC wish­es to reaf­firm its com­mit­ment to the right to equal­i­ty of treat­ment guar­an­teed by the Con­sti­tu­tion to all cit­i­zens,” the state­ment said, adding that it in­tends to treat every cus­tomer with equal dig­ni­ty and re­spect.