At a consultation in Region Ten with community leaders and key stakeholders, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds and Head of the Privatization Unit Winston Brassington called for suggestions to curtail the high costs being incurred in subsidizing electricity in Linden.
According to the prime minister, already for the current year the region has utilized $734M of its budget allocation of $2,043M. This, he said, would see the region exhausting the entire budget allocation by the end of October 2008.
In an attempt to stretch the remainder of the budget allocation to the end of the calendar year the government was seeking proposals from community leaders and stakeholders.
Regional Chairman Mortimer Mingo who was the chairperson at the Tuesday consultation, in making his contribution, said that he felt there is need for a wider consultation on the matter. He said also there is need for public education on the importance of cost recovery for electricity use, while acknowledging the efforts of the Linden Electricity Company Inc. which runs conservation messages on the local television.
A representative of the Interim Manage-ment Committee of the Linden Municipality was very emotional in saying that asking residents of Linden to pay more for electricity would be adding more pressure on them.
“Cde Prime Minister we were first misled with VAT which you guys claimed would not cause prices to go up. Then we are being fooled with TIN, now is electricity rate?” There was also another suggestion for the reintroduction of the use of gasifiers and wood fuel to drive the steam turbine. Some persons called too for the bauxite industry to subsidize the cost of electricity to households while others pleaded on behalf of pensioners.
Hinds said that the government is thinking of offering consumers the opportunity to pay the current rate for up to 100kwh and to pay the economic rate for the excess. This, community leaders said, would still put undue pressure on residents and suggested a 150kwh at the current rate and the excess at the economic rate.
At present domestic consumers pay $5.00 per kwh and commercial entities $1,200 per kwh.
On the question of having Chinese bauxite company BOSAI contribute to the Linden power subsidy, the prime minister said that he would rather keep the pressure on that company to control the dust emitted from the kilns.
The Linden Utility Services Co-op Society Ltd which distributes electricity on the Wismar shore said that residents need to get a true picture of the actual cost of supplying electricity to households. The society is a third party in the purchasing of electricity.
The consultation was not well-attended.
