On Tuesday, WASA talked tough to its contractors, demanding an end to substandard repair works on its infrastructure.The long standing and rueful joke about freshly paved roads being ripped up for repairs by public utilities has enough sting of truth to it that the need to hold contractors to a higher standard have taken this long to become a conversation between WASA and its contractors.
Acting CEO Gerard Yorke noted that the utility has spent $463 million on pipeline repairs over the last five years and some those works were of such poor standard that they had to be redone at further cost to the utility. WASA has also had to face $22 million in legal claims for damage to property and vehicles on these projects.
Clearly there is a pressing need for utility companies to coordinate their activities more effectively in order to more efficiently manage public disruptions caused by such repairs and to ensure that street repairs address all problems once they are undertaken.The fundamentals of service procurement need to be addressed first, and Government generally has not been having good luck with its hopes for quality work from contractors.
In February 2011, Minister of Housing Dr Roodal Moonilal lamented that shoddy work done on homes at a housing project in Union Hall had run beyond contractual limitations for liability and the HDC would not be able to pursue legal action or redress from the contractors responsible.The HDC, he noted, "did not move with the haste we would have liked."By May 2012, Udecott chair Jerlean John demanded that contractors "step up" and improve the quality of their service, from documentation to final project delivery.
Couva South MP Rudranath Indarsingh warned in July 2012, that he would not tolerate shoddy work from contractors doing road rehabilitation in his constituency after viewing repairs done in the villages of Milton and Carolina.
In June 2011 then CEO of WASA Ganga Singh found materials condemned by WASA two decades before in use at a project at Reform Village in South Trinidad. Taxpayers were expected to fund $100 million worth of remedial works on Estate Management and Business Development Company Limited projects on that project and nine others.
Clearly, WASA is overdue in taking the lead among government agencies and public utilities in seeking improvements in accountability with its contractors.The utility should also be ready to deepen its relationship with its contractors and to offer more robust quality assurance systems before works are considered ready for delivery.
That might begin with some level of continuous skill certification and review to ensure that contractors are employing workers of requisite skill, spending up front to employ bonded, skilled evaluators of projects who will review jobs in progress for infractions that might lead to shoddy workmanship and a continuous assessment of contractor projects to ensure that contractors are held accountable for failures in workmanship.
The establishment of such reporting systems could provide the seed of a Government wide system of accountability that might be harnessed to create more cost-effective collaborations between public utilities when disruptive community projects are undertaken.
