Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­als for in­creased penal­ties for of­fences re­lat­ing to “wa­ter theft rack­et” will soon be for­ward­ed to the Law Re­view Com­mis­sion.

Padarath an­nounced last month that they would be go­ing to Par­lia­ment “very soon” to in­crease fines and penal­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with the steal­ing of wa­ter.

Padarath said there were pri­vate con­trac­tors who were steal­ing wa­ter from WASA fa­cil­i­ties in com­mu­ni­ties and then sell­ing it back to res­i­dents. The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, told Guardian Me­dia that the new pro­posed fines and penal­ties were still be­ing dis­cussed.

Asked by re­porters for an up­date at the com­mis­sion­ing of lights at the Soogrim Ramd­ha­niesingh Recre­ation Ground at La­choos Road in Pe­nal on Mon­day, Padarath said, “That has to go through a leg­isla­tive process. The rec­om­men­da­tions were made from the board of WASA to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties about a week ago. It’s now with the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. That has to go to the LRC (Law Re­view Com­mis­sion). So that prepara­to­ry work has been con­clud­ed. It goes to the LRC and then it will go to the Cab­i­net. So, it’s go­ing through its full ini­ti­a­tion in terms of the process to get it there.”

He added that this leg­is­la­tion is “sort of ar­cha­ic” be­cause the WASA Act has not been re­viewed in a while, and sig­nif­i­cant work has to be done on the act.

Last Feb­ru­ary, then pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les dis­closed that an ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion was un­der­way in­to a sus­pect­ed “wa­ter truck­ing rack­et” in­volv­ing elect­ed coun­cil­lors with­in the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

It was al­leged that cer­tain of­fi­cials owned pri­vate wa­ter trucks and worked in col­lab­o­ra­tion with WASA em­ploy­ees to de­lib­er­ate­ly shut off valves in tar­get­ed ar­eas, cre­at­ing ar­ti­fi­cial short­ages and dri­ving de­mand for their own wa­ter sup­ply ser­vices.

Com­ment­ing on re­cent protests over wa­ter dis­rup­tions in Cas­tara, To­ba­go, he said that ow­ing to the hilly ter­rain and the num­ber of leaks in the sys­tem, wa­ter can­not trav­el ef­fec­tive­ly due to low pres­sure in the pipelines. He said they have mo­bilised some equip­ment from Trinidad to send to To­ba­go, and in­creased truck-borne sup­ply of wa­ter in af­fect­ed ar­eas.

Padarath who will be vis­it­ing To­ba­go with­in the next one to two weeks, said es­tab­lish­ing tank farms with­in the af­fect­ed ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tions was a pos­si­bil­i­ty, but ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture con­tin­ues to pose sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. He added that long-term mea­sures in­clude a de­sali­na­tion plant in Char­lottesville and ad­dress­ing chal­lenges with the Hills­bor­ough Dam.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue of van­dal­ism of WASA fa­cil­i­ties, he said, “How­ev­er, while we look at treat­ing with those mat­ters in terms of the ex­ist­ing di­lap­i­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture, we are look­ing at the new in­fra­struc­ture, but al­so adding an­oth­er com­po­nent of it, which is se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to mit­i­gate against those chal­lenges where you have theft and van­dal­ism.”