JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing to meet the re­quire­ments for ac­cess­ing an In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) loan to ad­dress the coun­try’s wa­ter is­sues.

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Padarath said his min­istry was work­ing close­ly with the Min­istry of Plan­ning to se­cure the fund­ing. He said the Gov­ern­ment had in­her­it­ed not on­ly age­ing in­fra­struc­ture at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), but al­so a lack of fund­ing to im­prove it.

“This is a prob­lem that has been hap­pen­ing for quite a while. Com­ing in­to of­fice, we have done an as­sess­ment and au­dit of WASA’s fa­cil­i­ties, in­clu­sive of the treat­ment plants and the mains. A num­ber of the main in­fra­struc­tur­al projects will get un­der­way post-bud­get, and that will in­clude the treat­ment plants, mains across the length and breadth of Trinidad and To­ba­go. It took them quite a while to do a lot of the scop­ing and iden­ti­fy the fund­ing.”

Ac­cord­ing to the IDB, the loan was ap­proved by its Board of Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tors on De­cem­ber 14, 2022. It forms part of a stream of fi­nanc­ing avail­able to the Gov­ern­ment to sus­tain in­vest­ment in the wa­ter sec­tor un­der the bank’s Con­di­tion­al Cred­it Line for In­vest­ment Projects (CCLIP).

The loan agree­ment al­lows the Gov­ern­ment to ac­cess US$315 mil­lion from the IDB over ten years through mul­ti­ple loan op­er­a­tions. The first tranche of US$80 mil­lion has al­ready been ac­cessed.

“This loan was ac­quired at least about four to five years ago. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the loan comes with con­di­tion­al­i­ties. And, there­fore, you have to be able to sat­is­fy those con­di­tion­al­i­ties in or­der to ac­cess the loan. I think that has been part of the chal­lenge with the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion not be­ing able to do as much as they should have done. But it re­al­ly re­quires an ag­gres­sive ap­proach.”

Padarath added: “We are work­ing clos­er with the Min­istry of Plan­ning in par­tic­u­lar and the Min­istry of Works. You will see a num­ber of these projects now com­ing on stream, in­clu­sive of the wa­ter treat­ment plant, as well as mains across the coun­try. But it will be done in a phased ba­sis. So it will not hap­pen all in one full swoop, but the works will oc­cur from post-bud­get, in a phased ba­sis.”

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, how­ev­er, said the IDB was drag­ging its feet in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the re­main­der of the loan be­cause it was aware of the Gov­ern­ment’s track record with loans.

“They have utilised loan re­sources in the past, not to im­prove the sup­ply of wa­ter, but to en­gage in a $500 or $600 mil­lion VSEP scan­dal in the wa­ter sec­tor. The Beetham Waste­water Treat­ment Plant, all of that were IDB re­sources. The IDB is aware of the UNC track record.”

Gon­za­les was re­fer­ring to a US$246.5 mil­lion IDB loan ap­proved in 2012/2013 for the Na­tion­al Waste­water Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme. The pro­gramme aimed to ex­pand waste­water treat­ment and sup­port reuse ini­tia­tives. It be­came en­tan­gled with the can­cel­la­tion of a con­tract be­tween the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS), which re­mains in ar­bi­tra­tion.

He added: “I’m not sur­prised and the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go are not to be sur­prised that they are now hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties be­cause when we were in gov­ern­ment, we had al­ready ac­cessed the first loan op­er­a­tion of $80 mil­lion and were well on the way to ac­cess­ing the oth­er loan op­er­a­tion.

“So don’t be sur­prised. What you are see­ing here is the IDB now putting up its guardrails to pro­tect its in­sti­tu­tion from a cor­rupt UNC gov­ern­ment.”