Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has been busy this week with af­fairs in­volv­ing the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to cit­i­zens was his an­nounce­ment that the au­thor­i­ty's re­struc­tur­ing process was well un­der­way, fo­cus­ing in the first phase on re­duc­ing a now 426-strong ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team by 40 to 50 per cent - which could work out to be at least 200 peo­ple in an over­all staff com­ple­ment of 4,800-5,000 work­ers.

This im­me­di­ate­ly prompt­ed a re­sponse from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, which has telegraphed a move to chal­lenge the im­pend­ing cuts of low­er-lev­el work­ers ahead.

How­ev­er, there is no doubt that the hu­man re­source bill at what con­tin­ues to be de­scribed as a dys­func­tion­al au­thor­i­ty is a ma­jor con­cern. And, of course, it is al­so well known that the top-heavy struc­ture is a di­rect spin­off of the fact that the au­thor­i­ty has been used for decades by gov­ern­ments as a job mill for par­ty sup­port­ers - a sce­nario which was on­ly halt­ed when the rev­enues flow­ing from T&T's oil-based ac­tiv­i­ty dried up sev­er­al years go. In fact, the cur­rent WASA sce­nario will be an ex­act mir­ror of a process al­ready un­der­tak­en by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TSTT), an­oth­er state en­ti­ty which fell vic­tim to such feed­ing fren­zies at state-owned en­ti­ties.

There is no doubt, there­fore, that a trim­ming of work­ers at the au­thor­i­ty will bring it more in line with the re­al­i­ty of its op­er­a­tions. And so, go­ing for­ward, we hope the three unions rep­re­sent­ing work­ers at the au­thor­i­ty will go to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble with a clear un­der­stand­ing of what is be­fore them.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les' an­nounce­ments came at the com­mis­sion­ing of wells here in Trinidad and in To­ba­go, and this is where we hope he will con­tin­ue to place ma­jor fo­cus. In­deed, in the heart of the dry sea­son, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les was proud to an­nounce that the four ma­jor reser­voirs across the coun­try were not at the nor­mal­ly crit­i­cal stages they have cus­tom­ar­i­ly been at this time of the year due to WASA's in­abil­i­ty to find more op­tions to store wa­ter for the dri­er months of the year.

He was even proud­er to an­nounce that Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing ahead with a $1 bil­lion pro­gramme, monies ac­cess via an In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Bank loan pro­gramme, to pro­vide cit­i­zens with ac­cess to a more sta­ble wa­ter sup­ply. This plan in­cludes the de­vel­op­ment of more wells, wa­ter treat­ment plants and the con­struc­tion of two small de­sali­na­tion plants in Moru­ga and Char­lot­teville. We hope the de­vel­op­ment of small de­sali­na­tion plants is al­so a tem­plate aimed at help­ing WASA wean it­self off its de­pen­den­cy on the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T for a ma­jor per­cent­age of its dai­ly sup­ply.

We should add that we hope this all re­sults in not on­ly a sta­ble wa­ter sup­ply but one that is pro­vid­ed on a 24-7 ba­sis - a promise that re­mains un­ful­filled de­spite promis­es by dif­fer­ent ad­min­is­tra­tions for decades.

So, at this stage, what we hope the min­is­ter, rather than en­gage in a blame game with the Op­po­si­tion on who is re­spon­si­ble for the state in which WASA finds it­self, will fo­cus his at­ten­tion on is get­ting the board to in­stall a new man­age­ment team so a re­struc­tur­ing process can be ini­ti­at­ed and the au­thor­i­ty forges ahead with its ma­jor de­vel­op­ment plans. Cit­i­zens de­serve no less.