The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter is call­ing for a full re­port from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), af­ter hun­dreds of com­muters and mo­torists from South, Cen­tral, and East Trinidad were stuck in traf­fic for hours yes­ter­day morn­ing, as the au­thor­i­ty re­paired a rup­tured pipeline along the west­bound lane of the Beetham High­way.

The traf­fic night­mare oc­curred as the na­tion’s chil­dren re­turned to school on the first day of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“While I do com­mend their ef­forts, I have no in­ten­tion of sug­ar­coat­ing it. I do be­lieve that they need­ed to do bet­ter in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the pub­lic,” Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said yes­ter­day.

Padarath said WASA in­formed him that one of its ma­jor pipelines had rup­tured on Sun­day near the Port-of-Spain Light­house, and emer­gency work con­tin­ued un­til 5 am in an ef­fort to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem. He ex­plained, how­ev­er, that the sur­face was sat­u­rat­ed with wa­ter and could not be resur­faced im­me­di­ate­ly.

“In the cir­cum­stances, I un­der­stand the pub­lic’s frus­tra­tion, and I have called on WASA for a full re­port. Once they re­alised the over­flow had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact that could not be ad­dressed in a short space of time, they at­tempt­ed to alert the pub­lic,” Padarath stat­ed.

Sev­er­al com­muters took to so­cial me­dia to ex­press their frus­tra­tion with the sit­u­a­tion.

Robert De Ramos said he was filled with emo­tion.

“I could’ve cried, but I chose to laugh, what else could’ve gone wrong?” he said.

An­oth­er com­muter, Rameez Ish­mael, called for the con­trac­tor to be fired.

“How can a ma­jor road be left like that???? I’m cer­tain there is equip­ment to com­pact and patch as soon as a leak is fixed. Time to hold their con­trac­tors re­spon­si­ble and set stan­dards for leak re­pairs,” he said.

Di­ane Cheong hoped the de­lay was not due to pol­i­tics.

“Imag­ine the first day of school, and peo­ple had to suf­fer like that! I hope there was noth­ing po­lit­i­cal in that ac­tion,” she said.

By 10 am, mo­torists were still re­strict­ed to one lane in the area of the re­pairs. When Guardian Me­dia re­vis­it­ed the site just af­ter mid­day, WASA work­ers were still work­ing, plac­ing two iron slabs over the rub­ble to al­low mo­torists to dri­ve more smooth­ly. Ac­cord­ing to the au­thor­i­ty, this tem­po­rary fix ex­pired at 6 pm yes­ter­day when work re­sumed.

How­ev­er, in a scathing post on so­cial me­dia, for­mer min­is­ter of pub­lic util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les said Padarath must take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the traf­fic build-up that im­pact­ed com­muters and mo­torists. He ad­vised Padarath not to ask for a re­port but to fire his “in­com­pe­tent man­agers.”

“Re­move your in­com­pe­tent CEO and your new com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er who were brought back in the au­thor­i­ty,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les claimed it was Padarath who sanc­tioned the fir­ing of pro­fes­sion­al man­agers to in­sert his “in­com­pe­tent bunch” to man­age the au­thor­i­ty.

“The pub­lic must now suf­fer as a re­sult of this, and now he pre­tends to dis­tance him­self by call­ing for a re­port for fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate with the pub­lic. This is hypocrisy and in­san­i­ty,” Gon­za­les claimed.

He ad­vised Padarath that the buck stops with him.