From Feb­ru­ary 1 the Wa­ter & Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) will em­bark on a ma­jor rate col­lec­tion dri­ve and if con­sumers don't pay up they will be dis­con­nect­ed. At the same time, cer­tain pen­sion­ers and needy peo­ple who can­not af­ford to pay their util­i­ty bills would re­ceive free lights and wa­ter. The warn­ing was sent out yes­ter­day by WASA's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Gan­ga Singh at a func­tion at the au­thor­i­ty's Pub­lic Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre at Farm Road in St Joseph. The good news were dis­closed by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Em­manuel George who al­so spoke at the launch of the Sec­tor Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee for Wa­ter and Waste­water and a WASA Work As­sess­ment Com­mit­tee.

Not­ing that en­force­ment was one of the six ar­eas list­ed for at­ten­tion at WASA, Singh said, "From Feb­ru­ary 1 WASA will em­bark on a ma­jor col­lec­tion dri­ve. "If you don't pay your rates you will be dis­con­nect­ed." While there was a need to col­lect WASA's mon­ey there is grace, too, he added. "Cer­tain per­sons, af­ter go­ing through a means test, will be able to ac­cess the Util­i­ties As­sis­tance Fund (UAF). "WASA will pro­vide the util­i­ty and the Gov­ern­ment will pay for it," Singh said.

George re­called that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced on Tues­day night that the Gov­ern­ment was in dis­cus­sions with his Min­istry over the grant­i­ng of free elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter to pen­sion­ers and the poor. He not­ed that the PM, dur­ing the Rien­zi Com­plex cel­e­bra­tions of the sec­ond an­niver­sary of her elec­tion as UNC leader, said noth­ing was fi­nalised as yet. The min­is­ter said Per­sad-Bisses­sar sug­gest­ed in­creas­ing the sub­si­dies for wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty to 100 per cent to cer­tain per­sons, which means that the util­i­ties will be free. Those who would qual­i­fy were those who were un­der the UAP, which grew out of the Hard­ship Re­lief Pro­gramme of 1996 es­tab­lished to as­sist eco­nom­i­cal­ly chal­lenged peo­ple pay their WASA bills, he said.

Last year, the Hard­ship Re­lief Pro­gramme was changed in­to the UAP af­ter a rec­om­men­da­tion from the Trinidad & To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­pa­ny that peo­ple with sim­i­lar chal­lenges be helped with their light bills. George said it was the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment which de­ter­mined who should be in the UAP. "Peo­ple who con­sume 400 kilo­watts of elec­tric­i­ty or less per month will be as­sist­ed with $364 per year by the Gov­ern­ment. "Those who fall with­in a cer­tain in­come brack­et will have $100 paid for them in wa­ter rates every quar­ter," the min­is­ter said.