DNA promises energy sector overhaul

“A good life” for all Antiguans and Barbudans is what the Democratic National Alliance (DNA) is promising should it win the March 21st general election, according to its election manifesto.
The party’s candidate for the St. John’s City East constituency, Bruce Goodwin, presented an overview of the “policy document” at yesterday’s launch where the party’s plans for the energy sector were among the areas highlighted.
Goodwin stated that the DNA had singled out the high cost of living as a key issue for the populace since last year, and they were proposing a major overhaul of the energy sector to alleviate its effects.
“The fundamental problem in this country with respect to this matter of the affordability of daily life is the cost of energy. The cost of energy, the cost of gasoline in particular, to facilitate our transportation whether it is your personal vehicle or taking the bus, because bus fares will reflect that problem of the high cost of energy.
“And the cost of electricity in the home and in the business because we know that household activities and economic activities are powered mostly by electrical energy,” Goodwin said.
Goodwin also stated that a new policy that brings cheap energy into people’s homes must be found and that would entail moving away from fossil fuels from which the high fuel variation charge is derived. However, the DNA candidate said a new approach must be adopted to run the sector since the public-private partnership model currently employed is detrimental to the people with the “rip-off profits” for the private investors.
“It is the DNA that has the correct policy with respect to these matters because something as fundamentally important as the provision of electricity must be a monopoly of the government of the people of this country.
“And that monopoly must function practically where the cost to the consumer must be the cost of generation plus only a marginal profit for the authority … because energy and the cost of energy is too important to be used to garner hefty profits for the provider once the provider is government,” Goodwin stated. 
(More in today’s Daily Observer)