RYAN BA­CHOO

WASA has re­spond­ed to Steve Camp­bell’s con­cern with re­spect to the ex­tend­ed de­lay in ad­dress­ing their com­pen­sa­tion claim for dam­ages that re­sult­ed from rup­tured sew­er and wa­ter lines at their Or­chid Gar­dens HDC home, Pleas­antville, in Jan­u­ary 2021.

The sto­ry was first car­ried in the Guardian News­pa­per.

WASA said in a state­ment, both the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Mar­vin Gon­za­les as well as the Au­thor­i­ty re­quest­ed some time in or­der to make in­quiries to de­ter­mine what in fact oc­curred.

"WASA has con­ferred with the HDC on the mat­ter and both or­gan­i­sa­tions have com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the Camp­bell’s claim will be as­sessed and ad­dressed with­in the com­ing week. It is to be not­ed that the claim is be­ing han­dled by WASA’s In­sur­ance Provider," the state­ment said.

WASA says its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter re­vealed that the plumb­ing at Camp­bell’s home was not built to ac­cept­ed stan­dards and the Au­thor­i­ty has launched a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion to as­cer­tain who con­struct­ed the build­ing and who grant­ed the ap­provals. The state­ment read, "What has been dis­cov­ered is that Mr. Camp­bell’s house was built on top of the pipeline in­fra­struc­ture, which de­sign ought not to have re­ceived WASA’s ap­proval and should not have been con­struct­ed in that man­ner."

Chair­man Ravi Nan­ga said: “Based on what has been dis­cov­ered, we need to de­ter­mine how this was al­lowed to oc­cur? Our sys­tems need to be suf­fi­cient­ly ro­bust to en­sure that things like this do not oc­cur and re­spon­si­ble par­ties will be held ac­count­able. Mov­ing for­ward we have launched our e-plat­form, which we hope will pre­vent such oc­cur­rences.”

Nan­ga said a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be con­duct­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the HDC to ex­am­ine the in­tegri­ty of the ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture and, if there were breach­es of the reg­u­la­tions, iden­ti­fy and take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to deal with the re­spon­si­ble par­ties, both with­in WASA and on the side of the con­trac­tor.