Protests over wa­ter may be­come a thing of the past, as the Gov­ern­ment has com­mis­sioned an $18 mil­lion-dol­lar Op­er­a­tional Con­trol Cen­tre (OCC) for the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to de­tect is­sues in re­al time.

Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial launch of the OCC at WASA’s St Joseph head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the ma­jor ben­e­fit of the fa­cil­i­ty was WASA be­ing able to mon­i­tor all its ser­vices.

“In the past, it’s quite un­for­tu­nate that dis­rup­tions would have been heard on the na­tion­al me­dia or peo­ple tak­ing to so­cial me­dia, on Face­book, to crit­i­cise the au­thor­i­ty where they would hear for the very first time that a com­mu­ni­ty is out of wa­ter for two months and three months as the case may be,” he said.

“We are de­pend­ing on tech­nol­o­gy. When peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence a dis­rup­tion in their sup­ply of wa­ter, we will know in re­al-time and we will re­spond in re­al-time, and there is no need to take plac­ards or go by the MP for Moru­ga and get tyres to burn and to block roads.”

The min­is­ter said, “This is re­al­ly go­ing to im­pact, di­rect­ly, the qual­i­ty of ser­vice that WASA is go­ing to pro­vide to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause it now has in­for­ma­tion at its dis­pos­al that it can re­spond in re­al-time to is­sues that might im­pact the lev­el of ser­vice to its cus­tomers.”

The 2,500-square-foot fa­cil­i­ty keeps an eye on all waste­water fa­cil­i­ties, wa­ter treat­ment plants, reser­voirs, sched­ul­ing and de­tects is­sues af­fect­ing sup­ply across both is­lands. It boasts mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy in­clud­ing two wall-to-wall dis­play screens and a cen­tralised plat­form for 24-hour mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol of sev­er­al sys­tems.

From the OCC, 14 en­gi­neers will be sta­tioned to guide field tech­ni­cians, who will each have tablets on hand to mir­ror the wall to wall dis­plays at the cen­tre. WASA cur­rent­ly has 263 in its pos­ses­sion.

De­spite these im­prove­ments, Gon­za­les sought to as­sure WASA em­ploy­ees that their jobs would not be made re­dun­dant be­cause of the OCC.

“This sys­tem is now cre­at­ing job op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple and it cre­ates, al­so, an op­por­tu­ni­ty for some of the em­ploy­ees of WASA to up­skill them­selves so that they can re­main rel­e­vant in a mod­ern wa­ter util­i­ty com­pa­ny.”

Gon­za­les ac­knowl­edged the neg­a­tive ef­fects of cli­mate change on the wa­ter sec­tor, as he not­ed that reser­voirs re­mained low de­spite tor­ren­tial down­pours brought by hur­ri­cane Beryl. He said while the OCC could not fix those prob­lems, it could mit­i­gate against wa­ter rack­ets.

He said, “We are no longer op­er­at­ing in the dark. Had this sys­tem been in op­er­a­tion, the fi­as­co in Morne Di­a­blo would not have been a re­al­i­ty.

“Wher­ev­er you have a dis­rup­tion, be it from a me­chan­i­cal per­spec­tive, be it man-made, sab­o­tage and what have you, this sys­tem will tell you that some­thing is wrong and that ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion is need­ed.”

Present at yes­ter­day’s com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny were Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Has­sel Bac­chus, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh. Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Josi­ah Austin was al­so in at­ten­dance.