An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For years, pri­vate wa­ter truck­ing com­pa­nies have played a crit­i­cal sup­port role in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, step­ping in when pipe-borne sup­ply is dis­rupt­ed. In­ter­views with truck dri­vers, em­ploy­ees and in­dus­try sources in­di­cate that the sec­tor is now un­der se­vere strain due to chron­ic non-pay­ment by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), with one long-stand­ing con­trac­tor fac­ing the prospect of clo­sure and dozens of work­ers ex­pe­ri­enc­ing grow­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ship.
Truck dri­vers af­fil­i­at­ed with Flex­i­ble En­ter­pris­es Ltd con­tact­ed Sun­day Guardian Busi­ness Mag­a­zine over re­cent weeks, de­scrib­ing a wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion that has left em­ploy­ees “on the bread­line” and the com­pa­ny un­able to meet ba­sic fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions. Their iden­ti­ties are be­ing pro­tect­ed due to fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion and loss of fu­ture work.
The com­pa­ny, which has pro­vid­ed wa­ter truck­ing and re­lat­ed ser­vices to WASA for more than two decades, has not re­ceived pay­ment since June 2025, ac­cord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources. That last pay­ment, de­scribed as par­tial, was stretched over sev­er­al months in an at­tempt to keep op­er­a­tions alive. With those funds now ex­haust­ed, the com­pa­ny is strug­gling to ser­vice loans, pay staff, main­tain in­sur­ance cov­er­age and keep a fleet of more than 75 trucks road­wor­thy.
“This is not about ask­ing for a hand­out,” one source ex­plained. “The work was done. We have all the doc­u­men­ta­tion to prove it. We met every con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion. What we are ask­ing for is com­mu­ni­ca­tion and some lev­el of pay­ment to keep the com­pa­ny afloat.”

The com­pa­ny de­clined to out­line the amount of mon­ey it claims is owed to it, cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

A sec­tor hol­lowed out

The cri­sis at Flex­i­ble En­ter­pris­es, which is lo­cat­ed at Cunu­pia, is em­blem­at­ic of a wider in­dus­try prob­lem. Mul­ti­ple sources con­firmed that oth­er truck­ing com­pa­nies pre­vi­ous­ly con­tract­ed by WASA have al­ready with­drawn ser­vices al­to­geth­er, cit­ing pro­longed non-pay­ment that has made con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion fi­nan­cial­ly im­pos­si­ble.

Over the years, op­er­a­tors qui­et­ly ex­it­ed the sec­tor, un­able to ab­sorb months, and in some cas­es years, of out­stand­ing in­voic­es. Each de­par­ture re­duced the pool of avail­able con­trac­tors, in­creas­ing re­liance on those that re­mained will­ing or fi­nan­cial­ly able to en­dure de­layed pay­ments.
“The nar­ra­tive about mo­nop­oly ig­nores the re­al­i­ty,” one in­dus­try source ob­served. “Com­pa­nies didn’t leave be­cause they weren’t award­ed work. They left be­cause they couldn’t sur­vive with­out be­ing paid.”

Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to the CEO of Flex­i­ble En­ter­pris­es Ltd, Chevan Ma­haraj, to con­firm what was said by the dri­vers. He in­di­cat­ed that for­mer con­trac­tors were award­ed sim­i­lar con­tracts un­der pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions but even­tu­al­ly pulled out when ar­rears mount­ed. Flex­i­ble En­ter­pris­es re­mained op­er­a­tional longer than most, he said, tol­er­at­ing in­con­sis­tent pay­ments to en­sure wa­ter con­tin­ued flow­ing to com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing short­ages.

Ser­vic­ing a wa­ter truck­ing fleet, Ma­haraj high­light­ed, is cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive. Fu­el costs fluc­tu­ate dai­ly. Ve­hi­cles re­quire reg­u­lar me­chan­i­cal ser­vic­ing, tyres, in­spec­tions and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Wa­ter tanks must be test­ed and ap­proved to en­sure potable wa­ter stan­dards are met. In­sur­ance pre­mi­ums, li­cens­ing fees and loan re­pay­ments re­main fixed re­gard­less of whether in­voic­es are paid.

“With more than 75 trucks, the burn rate is mas­sive,” a com­pa­ny source said. “Once pay­ments stop, col­lapse is not the­o­ret­i­cal, it’s in­evitable.”

Em­ploy­ees have al­ready be­gun leav­ing in search of al­ter­na­tive work as un­cer­tain­ty deep­ens. Dri­vers, me­chan­ics and sup­port staff told Sun­day Guardian Busi­ness that the sub­stan­tial sums owed have left the com­pa­ny un­able to sus­tain op­er­a­tions, even as em­ploy­ment op­tions else­where re­main lim­it­ed giv­en the spe­cialised na­ture of the in­dus­try.

Bread­line eco­nom­ics

The hu­man cost is stark. More than 100 work­ers are di­rect­ly af­fect­ed across truck­ing, garbage col­lec­tion, equip­ment trans­port and WASA-re­lat­ed lo­gis­tics, ac­cord­ing to sources. Rough­ly half are now with­out steady in­come, while oth­ers re­main un­cer­tain how long wages can be sus­tained.

“Our liveli­hoods are swing­ing in the wind,” one em­ploy­ee said. “Every day there is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. No­body from the Au­thor­i­ty is com­mu­ni­cat­ing clear­ly, and bills keep pil­ing up.”

Dri­vers re­port ris­ing com­plaints from the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Port of Spain, San­ta Cruz, Mor­vant and com­mu­ni­ties along the East-West Cor­ri­dor, where truck-borne wa­ter is es­sen­tial dur­ing sup­ply in­ter­rup­tions. Res­i­dents have in­creas­ing­ly voiced frus­tra­tion over de­lays and short­ages, un­aware of the fi­nan­cial grid­lock be­hind the scenes.

Sources al­so raised con­cerns about the stan­dards be­ing ap­plied to re­place­ment con­trac­tors. Es­tab­lished op­er­a­tors are sub­ject to rig­or­ous test­ing, in­clud­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry analy­sis of wa­ter sam­ples be­fore trucks are de­ployed. These process­es take time and mon­ey but are crit­i­cal to pub­lic health.

“This is drink­ing wa­ter go­ing in­to peo­ple’s homes,” a source stressed. “Be­fore a con­tract starts, sam­ples are test­ed and cer­ti­fied. That doesn’t hap­pen overnight.”

While these con­cerns could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied, they un­der­score anx­i­eties with­in the in­dus­try that op­er­a­tional short­cuts may emerge as ex­pe­ri­enced con­trac­tors ex­it the field.

Dis­pute draws min­is­te­r­i­al re­sponse

When con­tact­ed, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath de­fend­ed WASA’s po­si­tion and re­ject­ed claims that the Au­thor­i­ty was act­ing un­fair­ly.

He main­tained that WASA would not be “held to ran­som” by any ser­vice provider and point­ed to what he de­scribed as a mo­nop­oly cre­at­ed un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, leav­ing years of un­paid bills be­hind. He al­so in­di­cat­ed that WASA had launched an au­dit in­to Flex­i­ble En­ter­pris­es af­ter al­le­ga­tions of billing anom­alies and that al­ter­na­tive ser­vice providers had been en­gaged to mit­i­gate dis­rup­tion.

Padarath added that he had in­struct­ed WASA to en­sure no sin­gle con­trac­tor con­trolled es­sen­tial ser­vices and em­pha­sised that in­tim­i­da­tion would not in­flu­ence de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Those as­ser­tions were firm­ly dis­put­ed by Ma­haraj, who chal­lenged both the fac­tu­al ba­sis and the time­line pre­sent­ed.

Ma­haraj re­ject­ed claims that Flex­i­ble En­ter­pris­es ever held a mo­nop­oly on wa­ter truck­ing. He point­ed to ten­der records show­ing mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies were award­ed con­tracts un­der pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions. The dif­fer­ence, he ar­gued, was that most op­er­a­tors even­tu­al­ly ex­it­ed be­cause non-pay­ment be­came un­ten­able.

“We were not the on­ly com­pa­ny award­ed work,” he ex­plained. “We were one of the few that stayed the longest, tol­er­at­ing the sit­u­a­tion while oth­ers dropped out.”

He al­so de­nied that Flex­i­ble had sent any re­cent pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, de­scrib­ing that claim as false. The on­ly such let­ter, he not­ed, was sent in 2021 un­der the for­mer gov­ern­ment, ad­dress­ing the same is­sue of non-pay­ment.

On the al­le­ga­tions of billing anom­alies, Ma­haraj ques­tioned why con­tracts were re­peat­ed­ly re­newed if se­ri­ous con­cerns ex­ist­ed.

“If there were sig­nif­i­cant ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, why were con­tracts re­newed again and again?” he asked. “Why was noth­ing for­mal­ly raised with us in writ­ing?”

He fur­ther con­tend­ed that a sub­stan­tial por­tion of out­stand­ing pay­ments had al­ready been ver­i­fied and ap­proved in­ter­nal­ly with­in WASA but re­mained un­paid.

“At least half of what is owed is ap­proved and sit­ting there wait­ing to be paid,” he said. “The choice not to pay is a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion, not an ad­min­is­tra­tive fail­ure.”

Ma­haraj al­so re­ject­ed claims that Flex­i­ble had with­held ser­vices, ar­gu­ing that the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued op­er­at­ing un­der lim­it­ed in­struc­tions de­spite mount­ing ar­rears. In his view, the re­al pow­er im­bal­ance runs in the op­po­site di­rec­tion.

“The Au­thor­i­ty and the State are hold­ing the con­trac­tors to ran­som, not the oth­er way around,” Ma­haraj out­lined. “We con­tin­ued pro­vid­ing ser­vices while beg­ging for pay­ment.”

Re­spond­ing to this, the min­is­ter said: “The in­for­ma­tion I shared re­flects what was pro­vid­ed to me by WASA. The man­age­ment of WASA is cur­rent­ly in di­a­logue with the com­pa­ny, and it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for me to in­ter­vene in mat­ters con­cern­ing pay­ments to any con­trac­tor.

Any such is­sues like­ly oc­curred un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion; they do not oc­cur un­der my tenure.

Para­dath stat­ed that the Act­ing CEO of WASA con­firmed to him on Thurs­day evening the com­pa­ny had with­held ser­vices for sev­er­al days.

Un­der the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments in place at the time, on­ly a se­lect few were for­tu­nate enough to ben­e­fit.

He added that WASA has al­so af­firmed that it is ac­tive­ly au­dit­ing and in­ves­ti­gat­ing al­le­ga­tions of anom­alies in the bills that have been is­sued.