DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

An em­ploy­ee of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is among nine peo­ple de­tained in con­nec­tion with the van­dal­ism of four crit­i­cal wells in To­ba­go, an at­tack that se­vere­ly dis­rupt­ed the is­land’s wa­ter sup­ply.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said pro­duc­tion was re­stored to nor­mal lev­els as of yes­ter­day morn­ing, but en­dorsed the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s de­scrip­tion of the in­ci­dent as “do­mes­tic ter­ror­ism.”

The To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion echoed those con­cerns, warn­ing of sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tion to the tourism sec­tor.

Van­dals tar­get­ed elec­tri­cal ca­bles and T&TEC me­ters over the week­end, slash­ing pro­duc­tion by more than 100,000 gal­lons per day.

The dam­age re­sult­ed in a dai­ly loss of 2.1 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter, leav­ing 17 com­mu­ni­ties fac­ing dry taps or re­duced pres­sure.

“It re­al­ly was an act of trea­son. Be­cause those per­sons, I am ad­vised, are res­i­dent in To­ba­go. And there­fore they, too, have house­holds. They have moth­ers, fa­thers, broth­ers, sis­ters, etc, who utilise wa­ter on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

The Min­is­ter added that the Gov­ern­ment will con­sid­er mod­ern ways to pro­tect WASA fa­cil­i­ties.

“I have been speak­ing to WASA as well about se­cur­ing their fa­cil­i­ties. We are liv­ing in a tech­no­log­i­cal age where we need to in­vest in terms of se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus in our WASA fa­cil­i­ties.”

He said those mea­sures are ex­pect­ed to ex­tend to oth­er state as­sets, with the mat­ter like­ly to be raised at the next Cab­i­net meet­ing.

Padarath al­so al­leged that pri­vate con­trac­tors have been ac­cess­ing WASA fa­cil­i­ties in var­i­ous con­stituen­cies, steal­ing wa­ter and re­selling it to res­i­dents.

He said sev­er­al re­ports have been sub­mit­ted to the po­lice in re­cent days.

He al­so sig­nalled leg­isla­tive changes af­ter rais­ing con­cerns with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that ex­ist­ing fines are out­dat­ed and in­ef­fec­tive as a de­ter­rent.

“Our statute books right now, the fine is $275 for steal­ing WASA’s wa­ter, and there­fore those ar­cha­ic con­di­tions can’t be al­lowed to con­tin­ue,” he said.

WASA launch­es flood re­lief works in El So­cor­ro

In a sep­a­rate de­vel­op­ment, a mul­ti-agency de­silt­ing ex­er­cise led by WASA has be­gun along the El So­cor­ro Main Road cor­ri­dor, aimed at eas­ing per­sis­tent flood­ing ahead of the rainy sea­son.

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein said works will take place on both sides of the road­way, stretch­ing from the high­way to the San Juan Croisée, and are ex­pect­ed to last up to 30 days.

He ac­knowl­edged po­ten­tial traf­fic dis­rup­tions but said the East­er pe­ri­od could help to ease con­ges­tion.

Ho­sein added that the project was mo­bilised in “record time”, with scope and fund­ing quick­ly se­cured, con­trast­ing it with pre­vi­ous ef­forts un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Padarath said de­silt­ing equip­ment in­her­it­ed by the ad­min­is­tra­tion was large­ly non-func­tion­al or in dis­re­pair, but ef­forts are now un­der­way to re­store ca­pac­i­ty.

He stressed that flood­ing is a na­tion­al is­sue, not a par­ti­san one.

Res­i­dents have wel­comed the ini­tia­tive, point­ing to re­peat­ed flood­ing that has af­fect­ed busi­ness­es, dis­rupt­ed liveli­hoods and raised con­cerns for vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty.