An article from the Trinidad and Tobago media proclaimed that country as having the lowest electricity and water rates in the world. Yes you read that right. A small country part of the Caribbean grouping has surpassed North America and Europe in conscionable delivery of essential services to their citizens and occasional voters. The great blessing of oil resources for the benefit of a country.Guyana is close behind.
Trinidad quite rightly subsidizes the vulnerable sector of their society. In 2023 Trinidad had an electricity tariff of US$0.52 cents per kilowatt hour and a water rate of US$0.31 cents per cubic meter, the lowest in the Caribbean.
In a 2019 report the Inter-American Development Bank pronounced an average residential water bill of 15 cubic meters per month for Trinidad as US$4.42, 81% lower than the other Caribbean countries average bill of US$23.87.
220,000 citizens benefitted from subsidies at a cost of $16 million. A drop in the bucket for any country with a near billion dollar annual budget.
Utility bill comparisons across the Caribbean and especially the British Overseas Territories are best left to each and every consumer who has the residual power of a vote or recall provision in their respective Constitution if available.
Representatives of the people seem distracted with this and that task forces in the sweltering heat as expensive air conditioners force families and children into a Hobson’s Choice of sleep in the barely cool or daily life in the debilitating heat. Hobson became famous for an apparently free choice with no real alternative.
Sounds familiar.
Notes
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013); Jamaica, The Land of Film(2017); and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities 1940-88.
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