SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Gov­ern­ment will be pump­ing $100 mil­lion to fix leaky WASA mains says Ra­mona Ram­di­al, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources. Ram­di­al was speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day when she said her min­istry will em­bark up­on a dry sea­son pro­gramme, which will in­clude a wa­ter con­ser­va­tion dri­ve tar­get­ing wa­ter loss at homes. She said this project was in the pipeline and is ex­pect­ed to start be­fore the end of the year.

She said fund­ing to un­der­take the re­pairs to faulty wa­ter mains and WASA's wa­ter-truck­ing op­er­a­tions comes from WASA's an­nu­al bud­get. The projects are ex­pect­ed to start No­vem­ber 1. Ram­di­al said the leaks pro­gramme would fo­cus on ar­eas in the South West, North West, Cen­tral and north east Trinidad.

Ram­di­al said her min­istry was work­ing in close part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture to en­sure the prop­er paving of roads af­ter un­der­ground works have been done by WASA con­trac­tors. She said mem­bers of the pub­lic had com­plained that WASA con­trac­tors do an un­sat­is­fac­to­ry job of repaving the sur­face af­ter lay­ing pipes.

She said all paving op­er­a­tions would be done in a uni­formed man­ner on­ly when un­der­ground pipe lay­ing is com­plet­ed.