THE United Workers’ Party yesterday said it welcomed the news by LUCELEC to lower the price paid for electricity by 13.7 cents per unit.
“This is welcomed news to households and businesses across St. Lucia who have been suffering with high and uncompetitive electricity prices”, the party said in a statement.
Quoting LUCELEC Managing Director Trevor Louisy’s statement that the company’s hedging programme had worked to the overall benefit of customers over the last five years, the UWP said that given that price of oil had dropped by over 50 percent for the past year it was difficult to believe that St. Lucians had not seen a lower price per unit much earlier.
The party called on LUCELEC, a public company, to tell St. Lucians at what price the fuel price hedges took place over the past year.
It added: “We are also asking LUCELEC to clarify rumours that prices remained high due to an internal mistake by the company and instead of the shareholders paying for the mistake, they kept prices high in order to pass on the cost of the mistake to consumers”.
The UWP reminded LUCELEC that it was a public company that enjoyed a monopoly and expected them to be “transparent and truthful” in their answer.