Days af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­SA) ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to set­tle $75 mil­lion in out­stand­ing pay­ments to mem­ber com­pa­nies, the as­so­ci­a­tion says it has re­ceived a par­tial pay­ment from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) but main­tains that the amount falls far short of what is owed.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Wednes­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion called on Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath and WASA’s board of di­rec­tors to meet with its mem­bers to de­vel­op a struc­tured re­pay­ment plan.

“Our mem­bers sin­cere­ly ap­pre­ci­ate WASA’s re­sponse and the re­cent dis­burse­ment of funds. How­ev­er, we wish to re­spect­ful­ly em­pha­sise that the pay­ments re­ceived do not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress the sub­stan­tial out­stand­ing ar­rears owed,” the TTP­SA said.

“In light of this, we con­tin­ue to ap­peal for the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter’s in­ter­ven­tion and as­sis­tance in fa­cil­i­tat­ing fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the WASA board of di­rec­tors and rel­e­vant of­fi­cials. Our ob­jec­tive is to es­tab­lish a struc­tured and mu­tu­al­ly ac­cept­able re­pay­ment arrange­ment that will fa­cil­i­tate the set­tle­ment of the out­stand­ing ar­rears while en­sur­ing that month­ly in­voic­es for on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices are paid in a time­ly man­ner.”

TTP­SA spokesper­son Raquel-Ann Uzoe­me­ka pre­vi­ous­ly told Guardian Me­dia that the debt had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over the past three years. She stressed that the as­so­ci­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to raise the is­sue pub­licly should not be viewed as a po­lit­i­cal at­tack.

Ac­cord­ing to Uzoe­me­ka, re­peat­ed at­tempts were made over the years to en­gage WASA’s man­age­ment on the non-pay­ment of in­voic­es, but com­mu­ni­ca­tion even­tu­al­ly broke down. She had warned that se­cu­ri­ty firms owed mon­ey could not guar­an­tee their em­ploy­ees would re­port for du­ty on Oc­to­ber 16 if pay­ments were not made.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said Wednes­day that a pay­ment was made on that date.

“Our mem­ber com­pa­nies re­main com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing es­sen­tial se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and meet­ing their con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty. How­ev­er, the con­tin­ued ac­cu­mu­la­tion of ar­rears with­out a clear and sus­tain­able re­pay­ment plan threat­ens their abil­i­ty to meet these re­spon­si­bil­i­ties ef­fec­tive­ly,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Asked how much had been paid, Uzoe­me­ka said the 13 af­fect­ed com­pa­nies had agreed not to dis­close the fig­ure.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Padarath by phone and mes­sage for com­ment on the as­so­ci­a­tion’s re­quest for a meet­ing and on the amount paid. How­ev­er, up to press time, there had been no re­sponse.