Ryan Ba­choo

Princes Town MP, Bar­ry Padarath, has told the Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter law­suits against WASA are law­suits against the gov­ern­ment.

He con­demned the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties for not ad­dress­ing the fail­ing in­fra­struc­ture of WASA and in­stead en­cour­ages cit­i­zens to sue the State.

In a re­lease, the Op­po­si­tion Shad­ow Min­is­ter for Pub­lic Util­i­ties said that the gov­ern­ment for the past eight years has been speak­ing about re­struc­tur­ing WASA so that there will be greater ef­fi­cien­cy and de­liv­ery, how­ev­er that has not ma­te­ri­al­ized. In­stead, the ag­ing and di­lap­i­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture of WASA has caused sev­er­al homes and prop­er­ties across the coun­ty to be af­fect­ed and this al­so in­cludes lo­cal and main roads.

The Princes Town MP stat­ed that in­stead of the Min­is­ter con­fronting these chal­lenges head on and fix­ing the prob­lems that ex­ist in terms of ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al works across the coun­try to curb leak­ing pipelines that un­der­mines the in­tegri­ty and foun­da­tion of prop­er­ties, the Min­is­ter is in­stead telling cit­i­zens to sue the State.

Padarath went fur­ther in stat­ing that while cit­i­zens have a right to seek ju­di­cial re­lief, the Min­is­ter is not ad­dress­ing the root cause of the prob­lems and there­fore ju­di­cial re­lief comes at the ex­pense of the tax­pay­ers who fund the na­tion­al bud­get and in ef­fect WASA.

Padarath added that when a cit­i­zen sues WASA, they are in ef­fect su­ing the State.