New­ly ap­point­ed chair­man of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Roshan Bab­wah, says a com­pre­hen­sive plan for the au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions will be re­vealed with­in the next month.

He says ad­dress­ing the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply chal­lenges—par­tic­u­lar­ly in un­der­served ar­eas—is the top pri­or­i­ty for the new board.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tions in Cou­va on Sat­ur­day, Bab­wah, 55, who is a lawyer by pro­fes­sion, said WASA has been in­un­dat­ed with com­plaints from res­i­dents in South and Cen­tral Trinidad, as well as parts of the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

Bab­wah said it was un­ac­cept­able for these com­mu­ni­ties to be re­ceiv­ing wa­ter once or twice a month.

He said WASA would be re-rout­ing wa­ter sup­ply to en­sure that rur­al com­mu­ni­ties re­ceive a more con­sis­tent and eq­ui­table ser­vice—bet­ter than what they’ve ex­pe­ri­enced over the past decade.

Bab­wah al­so re­vealed that a com­pre­hen­sive plan for WASA’s op­er­a­tions will be rolled out with­in the next month, aimed at ad­dress­ing long-stand­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion is­sues and im­prov­ing over­all ser­vice de­liv­ery.

Mean­while, Gov­ern­ment is set to utilise fund­ing from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) to ad­dress crit­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing WASA’s age­ing in­fra­struc­ture across T&T. This was an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Bar­ry Padarath, as he at­tend­ed In­di­an Ar­rival cel­e­bra­tions at the Cou­va South Hall in Cam­den, Cou­va on Sat­ur­day.

Padarath is the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South.

He said he and the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the IDB last week. The meet­ing al­so in­clud­ed the Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the THA, and the two To­ba­go Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment. The pri­ma­ry fo­cus was im­prov­ing wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion through­out To­ba­go.

He high­light­ed that wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor chal­lenge in sev­er­al parts of Trinidad due to out­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture. In some ar­eas, par­tic­u­lar­ly in South Trinidad, homes have re­port­ed­ly col­lapsed as a re­sult of per­sis­tent leaks linked to de­cay­ing wa­ter lines.

Padarath not­ed that these in­fra­struc­tur­al chal­lenges have al­so hin­dered the di­rect de­liv­ery of wa­ter from the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (DE­SAL­COTT) to his con­stituen­cy of Cou­va South.

He dis­closed that sev­er­al wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tres are fail­ing to ad­here to their sched­uled de­liv­ery times. As a tem­po­rary mea­sure, wa­ter will be redi­rect­ed from ar­eas with a 24-hour sup­ply to com­mu­ni­ties that cur­rent­ly re­ceive wa­ter as in­fre­quent­ly as once a week or even once a month. Res­i­dents in high-sup­ply ar­eas may ex­pe­ri­ence re­duced wa­ter pres­sure to al­low for “fair­er” dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Ho­n­our­ing Bheem

Dur­ing his ad­dress at the func­tion, Padarath al­so an­nounced his in­ten­tion to nom­i­nate the late Anil Bheem for a na­tion­al award. Bheem, a cel­e­brat­ed lo­cal singer known for his In­di­an de­vo­tion­al and film mu­sic, passed away in 2023 at the age of 48.

Padarath re­called that fol­low­ing Bheem’s pass­ing, then-op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pub­licly called on the then gov­ern­ment to ho­n­our him posthu­mous­ly. He de­scribed Bheem’s con­tri­bu­tions as in­stru­men­tal in re­vi­tal­is­ing In­di­an cul­ture in T&T and stat­ed that dis­cus­sions have al­ready been held with Bheem’s fam­i­ly re­gard­ing the nom­i­na­tion.