The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has con­firmed the ex­is­tence of a “spe­cial pro­tect­ed list” that re­stricts its abil­i­ty to dis­con­nect cer­tain cus­tomers with out­stand­ing elec­tric­i­ty ar­rears, stat­ing that the mat­ter is now un­der le­gal re­view amid pub­lic con­cern over fair­ness and trans­paren­cy.

In a state­ment ad­dress­ing the is­sue, T&TEC said it was pro­vid­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion “in the pub­lic in­ter­est” fol­low­ing scruti­ny of the list, which al­lows se­lect­ed cus­tomers to avoid dis­con­nec­tion un­der stan­dard en­force­ment pro­ce­dures ap­plied to or­di­nary con­sumers.

The util­i­ty con­firmed that the list orig­i­nal­ly cov­ered key pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment min­istries and de­part­ments, state en­ter­pris­es, oth­er pub­lic au­thor­i­ties, and for­eign diplo­mat­ic mis­sions. How­ev­er, it not­ed that be­tween 2015 and 2025 the list was ex­pand­ed to in­clude some gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, and pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies.