SKELEC announced on Friday (12th October), that consumers will shortly be seeing added charges which they blame on a government service charge.
The SKELEC press release indicated that since the inception of the company, they have been charged a Customs Service Charge ( CSC) when purchasing fuel, but these fees, they claim, were never passed on to consumers, since the period 1st August 2011 to 31st July 2012.
If one is to understand the SKELEC release correctly, the company has therefore decided to apply the new charges, some of it retroactively, to 1st August 2012.
SKELEC has made it clear that it does not intend to continue to absorb such fees and is therefore passing them on to consumers, as part of the Fuel Variation Charge, adding to the already high electricity bills being paid by Kittitian customers.
Though they have stated a commitment to continue to improve their efficiency and look at other ways to reduce the cost of its service to all consumers, this will certainly not bring any comfort to approximately 20,000 customers island-wide, especially those who have already been finding it extremely difficult to meet their utility bills.
Some costumers of the company have revealed that they have already received a bill form SKELEC with the new cost already included.