sto­ries by Kalain Ho­sein

Kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day sug­gest­ed that mem­bers of the pub­lic who they be­lieve they have le­git­i­mate cas­es for dam­ages against the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) should seek le­gal coun­sel and ini­ti­ate ac­tion.

His com­ment fol­lows a High Court rul­ing on Mon­day that award­ed Laven­tille woman Janet Rousseau just over $1.7 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion af­ter a rup­tured wa­ter line de­stroyed her home in 2005.

Speak­ing to the me­dia at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties’ in­au­gur­al Caribbean Re­gion­al Con­fer­ence on Wa­ter Loss, Gon­za­les said, “I want to as­sure the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, but if you be­lieve that you have a claim of right to against the au­thor­i­ty for any dam­age that could have been done as a re­sult of neg­li­gence on the part of the au­thor­i­ty, that they should speak to the le­gal coun­sel and pur­sue what­ev­er theme that is right.”

The min­is­ter al­so said he was not sur­prised at the rul­ing, al­though he ad­mit­ted he heard of the court mat­ter for the first time on Mon­day. How­ev­er, he ex­pressed his sym­pa­thies to Rousseau.

He said, “This is a poor woman from Laven­tille. Re­cent­ly, we had an­oth­er poor cit­i­zen, I think from Pe­nal, that would have been al­lowed to be dragged through an en­tire ju­di­cial sys­tem, you know, pay­ing a lot of mon­ey to the at­tor­neys and the le­gal coun­sel to rep­re­sent a very pow­er­ful au­thor­i­ty that has the fi­nan­cial re­sources to de­fend them­selves.”

He added, “In my view, this should not have reached this state. This mat­ter should have been re­solved in the cir­cum­stances, es­pe­cial­ly if WASA recog­nis­es that it does not have the ev­i­dence to sup­port its de­fence of the mat­ter. They should have re­solved this mat­ter.”

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, short­ly af­ter Rousseau com­plet­ed the con­struc­tion of her home in De­cem­ber 2003, she no­ticed cracks in the walls. How­ev­er, when the leak was re­paired in No­vem­ber 2007, her home was ir­repara­bly dam­aged.

This lengthy de­lay in set­tle­ment, ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, has “strength­ened his re­solve” that the Gov­ern­ment is on the right track with its trans­for­ma­tion plan.

“We are so­lid­i­fied in our de­ci­sion that WASA as an au­thor­i­ty needs to change course and that this trans­for­ma­tion is jus­ti­fied in the cir­cum­stances,” he said.

He al­so said he thinks the Gov­ern­ment is for­ti­fied in its re­solve to con­tin­ue the trans­for­ma­tion ef­forts so that these things do not re­peat them­selves.

When asked if he was not wor­ried about the flood­gates of lit­i­ga­tion be­ing opened on WASA, Gon­za­les said, “The au­thor­i­ty and the man­age­ment of the au­thor­i­ty must use this case as a learn­ing point to change the way in which we treat all cit­i­zens, and we treat claims that are made from a pre­lim­i­nary stage. “Peo­ple don’t nor­mal­ly go and file an ac­tion against WASA for dam­ages done to their prop­er­ty. There is a process. They will write the au­thor­i­ty. They would in­di­cate to the au­thor­i­ty the dam­age they would have ex­pe­ri­enced. The au­thor­i­ty should do the right thing and the re­spon­si­ble thing, go and do the nec­es­sary as­sess­ments. And if it is found to be jus­ti­fi­able, set­tle mat­ters with­out hav­ing to draw cit­i­zens to the ju­di­cial process.”

While he did not have the ex­act fig­ure at hand, Gon­za­les said the to­tal val­ue of claims against the au­thor­i­ty at this time had reached $100 mil­lion.

Gon­za­les has asked WASA chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga to au­dit the man­age­ment of the util­i­ty’s lit­i­ga­tion based on what has tran­spired re­cent­ly.