For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ac­cused cur­rent Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath of us­ing a re­cent state­ment on fix­ing leaks at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate as a po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tion from what Gon­za­les de­scribed as cost­ly em­ploy­ment prac­tices at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Gon­za­les made the ac­cu­sa­tion in a me­dia re­lease, is­sued af­ter Padarath’s state­ment in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day. Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Padarath re­port­ed that 20 of 21 leaks at Point Lisas had been re­paired and al­leged that the is­sue had been ne­glect­ed dur­ing Gon­za­les’ tenure as min­is­ter.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les re­ject­ed the claim, de­scrib­ing Padarath’s com­ments as a cal­cu­lat­ed di­ver­sion from al­le­ga­tions raised by the Op­po­si­tion last week.

“The Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties read a pre­pared po­lit­i­cal state­ment in the Par­lia­ment meant to be a dis­trac­tion from the rev­e­la­tions made by the Op­po­si­tion at our press con­fer­ence last Thurs­day, where it was proven that WASA, un­der his lead­er­ship, is en­gaged in em­ploy­ment prac­tices that will sad­dle tax­pay­ers with a fur­ther $60 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, at a min­i­mum,” Gon­za­les said.

“He can­not ex­plain him­self nor give a rea­son­able ac­count for this de­vel­op­ment. In­stead, he came to Par­lia­ment, des­per­ate­ly look­ing for a po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tion un­der the pro­tec­tion of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege,” Gon­za­les added.

In de­fend­ing his record, Gon­za­les out­lined key ini­tia­tives un­der­tak­en by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion to ad­dress wa­ter loss and in­fra­struc­ture chal­lenges.

“Let me briefly state some facts: the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment ne­go­ti­at­ed a loan with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) for wa­ter sec­tor trans­for­ma­tion in 2022. For the first time in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go, there was a ded­i­cat­ed com­po­nent for non-rev­enue wa­ter,” he said.

“Clear­ly, the Min­is­ter was ei­ther mis­led or is pre­tend­ing not to know in his des­per­ate bid for a dis­trac­tion from his po­lit­i­cal mis­ery,. I rec­om­mend that the Min­is­ter up­date him­self on the lega­cy work of the pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment.”

He fur­ther ac­cused Padarath of at­tempt­ing to dis­tort the PNM’s record in the wa­ter sec­tor.

“His scan­dalous at­tempt to dis­tort the lega­cy of the PNM in the wa­ter sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the last pe­ri­od in gov­ern­ment, will not fool any­one,” Gon­za­les said.

—Gail Alexan­der