Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Ex­perts and for­mer of­fi­cials are sound­ing the alarm as the fu­ture of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) hangs in the bal­ance, with no clear di­rec­tion from the new ad­min­is­tra­tion fol­low­ing its de­ci­sion to aban­don the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s trans­for­ma­tion plan.

Econ­o­mist and for­mer chair­man of the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board Dr Ter­rence Far­rell ex­pressed deep con­cern over the lack of a stat­ed al­ter­na­tive.

“The truth of the mat­ter is that I don’t know, and I don’t think any­body does know what the new gov­ern­ment’s trans­for­ma­tion plan for WASA is,” he said.

“They’ve ba­si­cal­ly torn up the old plan. But what is their plan? If the in­ten­tion is to go back to the sta­tus quo ante, then you’re clear­ly go­ing back to what was one of the worst-per­form­ing pub­lic util­i­ties we had.”

The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, un­der then-min­is­ter of pub­lic util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les, had ad­vanced a re­struc­tur­ing strat­e­gy for WASA with back­ing from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB). The plan tar­get­ed wa­ter loss­es, mod­ernised in­fra­struc­ture, and im­proved cus­tomer ser­vice.

How­ev­er, with the ap­point­ment of Bar­ry Padarath as the new Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, that ini­tia­tive has been shelved.

Dr Far­rell re­mind­ed that WASA’s per­for­mance is­sues are long­stand­ing.

“We’ve been talk­ing about wa­ter for all since the year 2000—re­mem­ber that slo­gan?” he asked.

“We’ve been talk­ing about it for 25 years, and WASA has re­mained plagued by in­ef­fi­cien­cy and un­der­per­for­mance,” he said.

“It’s very dif­fi­cult to com­ment on what the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing be­cause we don’t know. They must have a plan. Clear­ly, I don’t think any ra­tio­nal gov­ern­ment would go back to the sta­tus quo ante. But if they don’t like the cur­rent plan, fine, then what is their plan? We have to wait and see.”

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte, who served dur­ing a pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, crit­i­cised the re­peat­ed dis­rup­tion of re­form ef­forts across po­lit­i­cal cy­cles.

“The is­sue of wa­ter re­form in Trinidad and To­ba­go has, for too long, been used as a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball, with dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal regimes over the past 25 years con­duct­ing eval­u­a­tions and start­ing plans,” Le Hunte said.

“The prob­lems at WASA are se­ri­ous but fix­able—and what they need is con­ti­nu­ity, not con­stant re­sets.”

Le Hunte em­pha­sised that the scrapped plan had a struc­tured and fi­nanced foun­da­tion, with the goal of achiev­ing a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply for the pop­u­la­tion.

“While any gov­ern­ment has the right to re­view or re­vise such plans, scrap­ping them with­out a clear al­ter­na­tive risk on­ly de­lay­ing progress,” he said.

“We pro­duce enough wa­ter, 240 mil­lion gal­lons a day, for 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple. Our prob­lem isn’t pro­duc­tion. It’s poor dis­tri­b­u­tion, out­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture, and in­ef­fi­cien­cy. If the Gov­ern­ment has a bet­ter plan, I urge them to im­ple­ment it swift­ly. At the end of the day, wa­ter re­form must rise above pol­i­tics. The pub­lic de­serves so­lu­tions and a 24/7 sup­ply of wa­ter.”