Tuesday 26th November, 2024
Taxes and tariffs increase in leaps and bounds, placing heavy burdens on the public, in this country, but reductions therein come in dribs and drabs, if at all. Governments are very efficient when they squeeze the public dry, but their high-octane performance is sadly absent when they are required to grant their victims some relief. The same holds true for the private state sector, which also keeps the prices of essential goods and services artificially high, making the adverse impact of the current economic crisis on the public even more unbearable.
It has been reported that electricity consumers will be denied the benefit of a tariff reduction this year because the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has not presented the proposed tariff revision to the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) for the latter’s approval. The CEB was to submit the proposal latest by 22 Nov., but it has asked for two more weeks. The PUCSL needs a few weeks to peruse the proposal to be submitted before making a final decision, we are told. This shows the callous disregard the CEB has for the public crushed under a heavy economic burden. If it had been required to effect an upward tariff revision, the CEB would have worked it out and presented it to the PUCSL in double quick time.
The PUCSL, as the power sector regulator, is not entirely blameless for this sorry state of affairs. What action has it taken to pressure the CEB to submit the proposed tariff revision? It should have used its regulatory power to make the CEB panjandrums expedite the formulation of the tariff revision proposal so that consumers could be given some relief without delay.
It has been reported that Sri Lankans pay about 2.5 to 3 times more for electricity than their counterparts in other South Asian countries, but the CEB is still sitting on its tariff revision proposal. Unfair as it may be to expect the new government to carry out all its election pledges immediately, action could have been taken to make the CEB finalise the tariff reduction in question fast. What the CEB is required to do is not as difficult as a space engineering project; it only has to do some cost calculations and adjust prices accordingly. Why the CEB personnel, especially the highly-paid engineers, take so long to carry out that task defies comprehension.
Meanwhile, the power sector trade unions have reportedly demanded year-end bonuses for the CEB employees on the grounds that their institution is making profits. One is elated that the CEB is no longer in the red, but the trade unions have stopped short of revealing how it has been able to make itself profitable. It has done so by jacking up tariffs, and its profits must be passed on to consumers. Before asking for bonuses and pay hikes, the CEB workers must provide a satisfactory service to the public, who pays their salaries.
The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) is also slow in working out price reductions much less revealing when it is planning to do away with the 50-rupee surcharge imposed on fuel to enable it to clear its debt. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, taking part in a television interview, which was full of softball questions intended to help him score heavily just before the last general election, claimed that he was not aware of how much of the CPC’s debt remained to be paid back, and refrained from saying when the surcharge would be abolished so that a substantial fuel price reduction could be effected. Information about the CPC’s debt, etc., should be readily available, especially to the Minister in charge of energy and the President. The government ought to reveal when the fuel surcharge will be removed. Or, is it that the CPC has already recouped its losses at the expense of the public?
The PUCSL must deal with the CEB’s noncompliance stringently, and provide electricity consumers with much-needed relief. Mere rhetoric won’t do.
