KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is look­ing for­ward to mak­ing some big changes come 2024.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said over the years too many of WASA’s projects failed be­cause of mis­man­age­ment with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia in Freeport on Wednes­day, Gon­za­les said mon­ey was nev­er a prob­lem for WASA as mon­ey has al­ways been pumped in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

How­ev­er, for far too long no one has tak­en up the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure projects were com­plet­ed on time and with­in bud­get.

To pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing go­ing for­ward, he has col­lab­o­rat­ed with WASA’s board of di­rec­tors to put to­geth­er a strate­gic ac­tion team to mon­i­tor projects deemed crit­i­cal.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, these are projects that will have a tremen­dous im­pact on un­served and un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.

This di­rec­tive comes as WASA is now man­ag­ing its US$80 bil­lion loan from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

Ac­cord­ing to IDB, the pur­pose of the loan is to boost the ef­fi­cien­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply and wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty.

Of that US$80 mil­lion, $20 mil­lion was used to com­mis­sion two new wells in Freeport, Freeport Wells Nos 19 and 20 yes­ter­day.

Gon­za­les said the wells will pro­vide in­creased wa­ter sup­ply to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21,000 peo­ple in Ca­roni Cen­tral, Cou­va South and en­vi­rons.

For months, res­i­dents of Freeport and Chick­land have been com­plain­ing about wa­ter.

Sound­ing a stern warn­ing to con­trac­tors dur­ing the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny for two Freeport wells yes­ter­day, one of WASA’s com­mis­sion­ers, Al­lis­ter Ban­doo, said no longer will con­trac­tors get away with be­ing paid to do a slop­py job.

Ban­doo said, “I ex­pect 2024 to be a chal­leng­ing year. I make no mis­take about it in say­ing that 2024 will be one of the most im­por­tant years for the au­thor­i­ty. To all the con­trac­tors, all free­ness done. In the words of the song­writer Machel Mon­tano, par­ty done. You will be held to ac­count, and we are no longer ac­cept­ing costs over runs, lengthy de­lays and shod­dy work.”