Probe into TTEC very welcome

The Editor: TTEC’s request for a rate increase has prompted the Regulated Industries Commission (RIC) to evaluate in a very clinical and professional way the operations of TTEC. Its findings, according to previews of their report, suggest that some 70 percent of TTEC’s costs are related to aspects of the deal imposed on it which brought Powergen into being. Any deliberations on a rate increase has to address and justify all the factors that impact on TTEC’s cost and this means that the deal with Powergen must be critically analysed to ensure that customers are not being called upon to finance waste, inefficiency or corruption. This deal is being referred to as a “sweetheart” one with the clear inference that Powergen was the beneficiary in the arrangement and TTEC — and by extension its customers, were the losers.

It is not the first time that this has been said about the TTEC- Powergen arrangement. I am sure we all can recall that during the time the deal was being set up there was strong objection from many persons to several aspects of it but it was eventually rationalised and sold to the nation as necessary for providing substantial additional generating capacity which their new partner  Powergen would have put in place — they of course never did. The deal was suspect in many other respects and the inferences emanating from an independent and respectable organisation such as the RIC should be more than enough reason to transparently investigate and evaluate this deal.

Justification for such can be found in the cost this deal continues to impose on all citizens of the country but most importantly it is the learning which the truth could bring to Government and the citizenry. The latter is very important because the persons who made this deal are still very active and making even bigger ones today — supposedly in the interest of the country and its citizens and, if the inferences to be drawn from the RIC report are true, there is real danger in having them continue in this role. Our unpreparedness to evaluate our past, and learn and grow wise from the lessons that could flow from this, lies at the root of our inability to progress — to evolve. With us, such experiential learning seems not to take place even at the instinctive level so that like Pavlov’s dogs, we acquire the innate skill to know what not to do or where not to go or with whom not to interact or who not to trust. 

I have, on previous occasions, cited the 2020 Vision Report and the total lack of critical historical analysis with regard to our energy sector (and probably others as well) so as to offer us a basis for planning/strategising its future development. It is such an elementary concept that our attempt to develop a vision for the future without seeking first to learn from our experiences, and even that of others, poignantly tells our story as a people. Our failures in such fundamental respects are what explain why today we only own ten or twelve percent of the recent LNG plant (while other countries own over 65 percent of theirs) and why we are the last to know where our LNG is being sold and at what price. It also explains why despite the fact we have had, for at least 100 years, all the basic elements for being an industrialised nation, we are still today little more than a colony that has been overtaken by countries whose GDP’s were a fraction of ours less than 60 years ago.

There is a lot more to be said but the essential instruction is that we need to become smart — like Pavlov’s dogs, and start learning from our experiences. The investigation being recommended, is undoubtedly justified by the RIC report and will be an opportunity to not only correct some of the wrongs of the past but to understand how and why we have ended up where we are now and, if we do imbibe the learning from the investigation, how to make sure we avoid such mistakes in the future.

Eugene A Reynald,
Port-of-Spain