Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath, has al­leged that wa­ter rates will go up by the sec­ond quar­ter of next year, though he pro­vid­ed no in­for­ma­tion to back his claim.

Padarath was speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, where he pledged to file a pri­vate mo­tion in the Par­lia­ment to ad­dress the is­sues af­fect­ing the au­thor­i­ty.

“I am re­li­ably ad­vised that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has told Moody’s, Stan­dard & Poor’s and the oth­er cred­it rat­ing agen­cies that wa­ter rates will go up in June of 2024 and they, the RIC, is far ad­vanced in com­plet­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions for the wa­ter rates,” he said.

“I am fur­ther ad­vised that right now the board of WASA has in­struct­ed the man­age­ment to start prepar­ing ter­mi­na­tion let­ters and there­fore, as I re­peat what deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Jear­lean John told me, 'I will be home for Christ­mas' takes on a whole new mean­ing for WASA em­ploy­ees. The dev­il is in the de­tails!” he added.

Padarath fur­ther ac­cused Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les of at­tempt­ing to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion on the pend­ing rate hike and re­struc­tur­ing of WASA when he gave his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

"It was al­most a chameleon-like at­tempt that the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties came to the Par­lia­ment with, know­ing very well that the fig­ures that were sub­mit­ted to the Par­lia­ment had these cuts and spoke for 55 min­utes to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and nev­er once said that this was the di­rec­tion the gov­ern­ment was go­ing in,” he said.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les and WASA CEO Kelvin Ro­main both rub­bished the MP’s as­ser­tions.

Ro­main told Guardian Me­dia “This is news to me. I have no such knowl­edge of that claim.”

On the oth­er hand, the min­is­ter re­called that he laid a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee re­port in the par­lia­ment in 2021 where full dis­clo­sure was made on WASA’s op­er­a­tions. He re­mind­ed that the re­port out­lined the trans­for­ma­tion re­quired to make it an ef­fi­cient­ly man­aged util­i­ty com­pa­ny.

"I said to the Par­lia­ment and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that the gov­ern­ment has ac­cept­ed the re­port and will come up with a trans­for­ma­tion plan for WASA. That plan was com­plet­ed one year ago. It was again dis­closed to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty when I called a press con­fer­ence in my of­fice. Have I not been trans­par­ent to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty on this is­sue? The re­port is there for all to read. Pub­lished for all who have the time to read. So, what on earth Mr Padarath is now try­ing to in­sin­u­ate by call­ing me "de­cep­tive"? I'm not a Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties that came to of­fice be­cause I walked around car­ry­ing some­one's hand­bag,” he said.

Gon­za­les al­so cau­tioned the pub­lic to ig­nore Padarath and the “UNC ly­ing ma­chine”.

Gopeesingh ques­tions coun­try's death rate

Mean­while, al­so speak­ing at the news con­fer­ence, for­mer health min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh ques­tioned the gov­ern­ment on this coun­try's mor­tal­i­ty and mor­bid­i­ty rate. He said he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) which re­vealed that 11,266 peo­ple died in 2019; 12,986 in 2020; 13,389 in 2021 and 18,356 in 2022.

Not­ing that this marks an in­crease of 7,000 deaths - with Covid-19 ac­count­ing for around 4,600 mor­tal­i­ties - Gopeesingh said the gov­ern­ment must out­line why that is.

"It's a wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion in health and peo­ple are los­ing their lives which are pre­ventable. Fam­i­lies are los­ing mem­bers of their fam­i­ly be­cause the gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Health has failed and con­tin­u­ing to fail to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion as far as the health sec­tor is con­cerned and $56 bil­lion have been spent over the last sev­en years in the health sec­tor and what have you got to show for it? Ab­solute­ly noth­ing!" he said.

"And so we call on the Prime Min­is­ter to have ur­gent dis­cus­sions and call an ur­gent meet­ing to ad­dress this un­ac­cept­able sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try where cit­i­zens and mem­bers of their fam­i­lies are los­ing their lives be­cause of in­com­pe­tence, gross man­age­ment. I call for the res­ig­na­tion or the fir­ing of the Min­is­ter of Health with im­me­di­ate ef­fect based on this in­for­ma­tion! I have been in the med­ical sec­tor for 49 years of my life. I've nev­er seen any­thing more dis­as­trous," Gopeesingh added.