Like coun­tries around the world, wa­ter sys­tems in Trinidad and To­ba­go that keep ecosys­tems thriv­ing and feed a grow­ing hu­man pop­u­la­tion have be­come stressed.

Cli­mate change is al­so al­ter­ing pat­terns of weath­er and wa­ter around the world, caus­ing short­ages and droughts in some ar­eas and floods in oth­ers.

The pub­lic’s view is that works done to re­verse the ef­fects of wa­ter short­age is com­pa­ra­ble to a drop in the buck­et.

In 2019, dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate, MP Gan­ga Singh, a for­mer Wa­ter Re­sources Min­is­ter, said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment was “wait­ing for wa­ter to fall from heav­en” rather than putting mea­sures in place in the event that the coun­try faces a drought.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Singh, who promised “wa­ter for all” at the end of the year 2,000. He de­clined to com­ment on why ac­cess to pipe-borne wa­ter has been a per­sis­tent strug­gle for many, what was need­ed to rem­e­dy the gen­er­a­tional quandary and why every house­hold in the coun­try did not have pipe-borne wa­ter as he promised back then.

How­ev­er, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day did speak. He said re­new­ing the coun­try’s age­ing wa­ter and waste­water in­fra­struc­ture could help solve the strug­gles.

But Pan­day, who com­mis­sioned the first de­sali­na­tion plant, said un­less there is prop­er man­age­ment at Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, the coun­try’s wa­ter woes will go un­abat­ed.

“The prob­lem is the politi­cians have used the WASA to give jobs to their friends and fam­i­lies based on nepo­tism, po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age and so on. They just filled it there with peo­ple who were not trained at all to do any­thing, they just give jobs for votes. That hap­pened both un­der the Peo­ples Part­ner­ship and PNM, it did not hap­pen with us (re­fer­ring to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress he led).”

Ac­cess to clean, re­li­able run­ning wa­ter and safe san­i­ta­tion are base­line con­di­tions for health and well be­ing.

How­ev­er, they re­main out of reach for many, es­pe­cial­ly those lo­cat­ed in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered across the coun­try. Bet­ter wa­ter ac­cess would al­low these vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties to thrive.

Pro­fes­sor Red­dock calls for crit­i­cal changes

Ac­cord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Rho­da Red­dock, the coun­try’s gov­er­nance struc­ture has paved the way for the coun­ter­pro­duc­tive op­er­a­tion of many agen­cies, WASA not be­ing ex­empt.

The Head of the Cen­tre for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies St Au­gus­tine cam­pus and so­cial ac­tivist said every elec­tion con­ti­nu­ity across min­istries is bro­ken and projects ei­ther shelved or de­layed.

“Every time a gov­ern­ment changes we change all the min­istries, all the min­is­ters, all the al­lo­ca­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties so de­part­ments have to move, we then change all the boards and some­times it takes ages to get a board and by the time the board starts to work, we have an­oth­er elec­tion. I think it is not a smart way of work­ing we have to get ma­ture and grown-up and not change every sin­gle board with every elec­tion.”

Pro­fes­sor Red­dock ex­plained that the coun­try is at a crit­i­cal junc­ture where se­ri­ous de­ci­sions must be made about wa­ter man­age­ment and so­ci­ety must be pre­pared to hold all the au­thor­i­ties ac­count­able.

While sweep­ing changes have been an­nounced to deal with the in­ef­fi­cien­cies at WASA and talks about pri­va­tiz­ing the or­ga­ni­za­tion have been raised, Pro­fes­sor Red­dock be­lieves it will not nec­es­sar­i­ly solve the cri­sis.

“I am not in favour of pri­va­ti­za­tion of wa­ter, I be­lieve there is enough that has been pri­va­tized that used to be com­mon in the past but no longer is, so in oth­er words, I be­lieve the poor, el­der­ly, the dis­abled, the mar­gin­al­ized, the rur­al com­mu­ni­ties must all have ac­cess to safe, clean and free drink­ing wa­ter, that is the most ba­sic of hu­man rights. We must get the cen­tral­ized sys­tem right, we al­so have to build up com­mu­ni­ty re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for wa­ter.”

Ef­forts to close the wa­ter ac­cess gap in Trinidad and To­ba­go which has widened over 100 years is ex­pect­ed to be the pri­or­i­ty of a new­ly ap­point­ed ex­ec­u­tive at WASA with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les as­sur­ing that once crit­i­cal pro­grammes are launched, sup­ply will be im­proved by the end of the year.

Un­til then, cit­i­zens wait with bat­ed breath and buck­et in hand.