Kalain Ho­sein

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

By the end of April, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) should have a new ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team. Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les con­firmed this on the sec­ond day of the Caribbean Re­gion­al Con­fer­ence on Wa­ter Loss yes­ter­day.

“We are mov­ing at pace. I ex­pect that by the end of April, we will have a new ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship in place for the or­gan­i­sa­tion in align­ment with a mod­ern wa­ter util­i­ty com­pa­ny. Once that is com­plet­ed, we look to­wards mov­ing at oth­er lev­els that may im­pact the bar­gain­ing unit,” Gon­za­les said.

The min­is­ter said when WASA reach­es the lev­el of af­fect­ing unionised em­ploy­ees, man­age­ment will “have to un­der­take the nec­es­sary con­sul­ta­tion with the unions in ac­cor­dance with the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing arrange­ments.”

These rev­e­la­tions came fol­low­ing the min­istry’s un­veil­ing of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Na­tion­al In­te­grat­ed Wa­ter Re­sources Man­age­ment Pol­i­cy, which has for­malised the move­ment of the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency (WRA) out of WASA un­der a new name—the Of­fice of Wa­ter Re­source Man­age­ment - with­in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. Gon­za­les said, “WRA is (our) reg­u­la­tor. You can’t have a reg­u­la­tor buried in an op­er­a­tor.”

He said this move is in align­ment with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices.

The new wa­ter man­age­ment pol­i­cy is a change from pri­or man­age­ment strate­gies, as all stake­hold­ers are be­ing brought to the ta­ble for the first time, he not­ed. Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, the pol­i­cy tack­les wa­ter chal­lenges in T&T from a sec­tor-wide per­spec­tive where WASA is just one op­er­a­tor and one stake­hold­er in the broad­er sec­tion of wa­ter man­age­ment.

“For ex­am­ple, in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have is­sues with re­spect to il­le­gal de­vel­op­ments that are tak­ing place with­out the req­ui­site Town and Coun­try Plan­ning ap­proval, and from the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty, that is al­so pos­ing a very se­ri­ous risk to WASA be­ing able to pro­vide the coun­try with a re­li­able sup­ply of wa­ter,” Gon­za­les said.

With­in these de­vel­op­ments, the Min­is­ter ex­plained that sew­er sys­tems even­tu­al­ly go out of op­er­a­tion with­in a decade, send­ing raw sewage in­to the na­tion’s wa­ter­cours­es and im­pact­ing WASA’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide the peo­ple with clean, potable wa­ter. The re­sult, ac­cord­ing to him, is “the util­i­ty com­pa­ny now must ex­pend large sums of mon­ey to treat wa­ter and bring it to a stage where the con­sumer and cit­i­zens can now have ac­cess to potable wa­ter.”

“It is not the fault of WASA, but be­cause of our in­abil­i­ty to reg­u­late de­vel­op­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it pos­es a se­ri­ous risk to WASA to get the clean wa­ter they can now treat,” he said.

Gon­za­les al­so took is­sue with il­le­gal de­for­esta­tion caus­ing in­creased sed­i­ments to en­ter wa­ter­cours­es dur­ing the Wet Sea­son, which in turn clog wa­ter in­takes, es­pe­cial­ly in north-east­ern Trinidad.

He said while the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank’s pro­gramme is tack­ling site leaks, this pol­i­cy is “now an over­ar­ch­ing frame­work and a blue­print to bring every­one to­geth­er so that we can all play our part, as stake­hold­ers to en­sure that as a coun­try, we pro­tect this re­source for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.”

The pol­i­cy has been in the draft stages for years and asked why it was be­ing un­veiled now, Gon­za­les re­spond­ed, “Cli­mate change.”

He con­tin­ued, “Once we bring all stake­hold­ers on board, and we erad­i­cate il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, and we en­sure that de­vel­op­ers are reg­u­lat­ed in the way that they must be reg­u­lat­ed, it means that we will be in a bet­ter place to deal with the rav­ages of cli­mate change so that we can pro­vide the pop­u­la­tion with a sus­tain­able wa­ter sup­ply.”