THE Office of Utility Regulations (OUR), on the weekend honoured 11 workers at its fifth anniversary celebrations and awards banquet at the Visitor’s Lodge on Mona campus of the University of the West Indies.

Among the 11 honoured by the OUR was outgoing executive director, Winston Hay, who will be retiring at the end of the month.

Employees honoured were office attendant Venetia Cooke; Shirley Stewart, driver; Denise McCalla-receptionist; Ainsley Williams, case officer; Antionette Stewart, director of consumer affairs; Franklyn Brown, senior economist, Maurice Charvis, director of research; Ingrid Brown, office service supervisor; Clara Johnson, executive secretary and senior accounting clerk, Margaret Johnson.

All eleven awardees have been employed to OUR since the start of operations.

There was also a video presentation which showed staff at various levels recounting the ways in which Hay touched their lives and expressing regret at his leaving. Hay, who cried during and after the presentation, has been at the helm of the OUR since its inception in 1997. No successor has yet been named to fill the post.

Meanwhile, Phillip Paulwell, the minister of Industry, commerce and technology, who gave the main address, said there was a proposal in place for a single regulations body that would encompass the work of the Fair Trading Commission and the Office of Utilities Regulations, to come on stream.

Paulwell also told the ceremony that the draft of a consumer bill was to be tabled in Parliament. The bill, he said, would seek to provide protection for the consumer against unfair trading practices and contracts that could possibly be foisted upon by them by unscrupulous traders.