by Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie

There may be on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy about WASA, but some­thing has to be done.

In one phase of my var­ied life as a learn­er, I was an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al change and de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tant. Be­fore I did any­thing in an or­gan­i­sa­tion, I tried to get to know it, make an as­sess­ment of what is its rai­son d’etre and what it is do­ing right to achieve that and what it is do­ing wrong that pre­vents it from do­ing and be­ing, what it was meant to do and be. On­ly then would I be­gin.

I have not had the ben­e­fit of an as­sess­ment, and, I am look­ing at WASA from the out­side as any­one else. But if WASA is a com­pa­ny that is not meet­ing its man­date, then it re­quires in­ter­ven­tion. But it is not just about cost and hu­man re­source ef­fec­tive­ness, as re­al as these might be.

What would a trans­formed WASA do that it is not do­ing or un­able to do now? WASA’s rea­son for be­ing is to sup­ply wa­ter for all pur­pos­es in T&T. It is a State mo­nop­oly. Every home in need of potable wa­ter and every in­dus­try in need of wa­ter, in­deed every build­ing, site or fa­cil­i­ty that needs wa­ter, is a WASA cus­tomer.

As new homes are built, as new hous­ing de­vel­op­ments spring up, as new busi­ness­es are es­tab­lished, as new in­dus­tries and in­dus­tri­al sites spring up, its base of cus­tomers grows. A mo­nop­oly with a grow­ing cus­tomer base has all the re­quire­ments for a lu­cra­tive, prof­itable busi­ness. In­deed, growth and pros­per­i­ty are WASA’s friends.

WASA has a cus­tomer base in which it is the mo­nop­oly sup­pli­er. The fact that the State owns it is ir­rel­e­vant. As a mo­nop­oly with a cap­tive cus­tomer base, it has all the in­gre­di­ents for suc­cess. So, if it is a fail­ure, there are rea­sons. Struc­ture, sys­tem and man­age­ment is­sues.

Does WASA sup­ply in a rea­son­able way all who have WASA con­nec­tions? The an­swer to that is no. Are all cus­tomers up to date in their pay­ments and does WASA have a sys­tem which ef­fec­tive­ly mon­i­tors and fol­lows up on this, so that its re­ceiv­ables are not lat­er than, let’s say, 60 days? If there are re­ceiv­ables with delin­quent cus­tomers for more than 60 days, does it have an ag­gres­sive ac­tion plan to ad­dress this, es­pe­cial­ly with in­dus­tri­al or busi­ness or state en­ti­ties? A busi­ness has to be man­aged.

If there are delin­quent cus­tomers, home­own­ers who are not get­ting an ad­e­quate sup­ply, say less than three days per week, or with un­pre­dictable long de­lays be­tween in­ad­e­quate, spo­radic sup­ply times, how is WASA ra­tio­nal­ly ad­dress­ing this? It is not rea­son­able to ask cit­i­zen home­own­ers to pay for wa­ter that they do not re­ceive. These are cus­tomer de­liv­ery and ser­vice is­sues.

The prob­lems, as iden­ti­fied in the para­graph above, can on­ly be some com­bi­na­tion of wa­ter cap­ture, stor­age, sup­ply, dis­tri­b­u­tion and the ef­fec­tive man­age­ment and mon­i­tor­ing of these. The wa­ter cap­ture is­sue is a func­tion of rain­fall (cli­mate change promis­es plen­ty), known and avail­able un­der­ground sources, smart man­age­ment of flood­ing and wa­ter cours­es, de­sali­na­tion and so on. We should be able to fig­ure out how many gal­lons we need for 450,000 house­holds and 25,000-plus busi­ness­es, and ad­dress the sources of sup­ply for a smarter stor­age sys­tem that struc­tures a mix­ture of cen­tralised and de­cen­tralised stor­age. In­fra­struc­ture and strat­e­gy is­sues.

There are about 600 com­mu­ni­ties in T&T. There are al­so 14 re­gions in Trinidad and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween WASA and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions could prove de­sir­able. How can this help WASA to plan bet­ter?

The dis­tri­b­u­tion is­sue has to do with leak­age, in­ef­fec­tive mon­i­tor­ing and time­ly fix­ing of leaks, un­re­spon­sive­ness to trou­ble calls and re­ports, wastage, re­place­ment of worn or frag­ile pip­ing, and lay­ing new pipes or re­plac­ing with larg­er pipes to en­sure dis­tri­b­u­tion to every home or in­sti­tu­tion in every com­mu­ni­ty now un­der­served. In hilli­er com­mu­ni­ties, ei­ther boost­er pumps or high­er stor­age sys­tems might be need­ed. Once a func­tion­al, work­ing sys­tem is es­tab­lished it must be ef­fec­tive­ly man­aged and mon­i­tored with stan­dards of re­spon­sive­ness to prob­lems. I be­lieve that T&TEC has been able to achieve this through a sys­tem of trou­ble calls.

The rai­son d’etre of WASA is to pro­vide a re­li­able, pre­dictable wa­ter sup­ply to every one of its cus­tomers at a fair price (some­thing that re­quires dis­cus­sion) and to ef­fec­tive­ly deal with any prob­lems that may arise in terms of wa­ter needs.

The key thing for WASA, there­fore, is to struc­ture an or­gan­i­sa­tion that will meet the re­quire­ments for WASA’s rea­son for be­ing. That means work­ing from cus­tomer ser­vice and sat­is­fac­tion, back­wards in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tion (from the out­side in, not from in­side out­wards) and re­struc­tur­ing it for cus­tomer de­liv­ery and ser­vice with smart tech­nol­o­gy and re­al-time round-the-clock com­mu­ni­ca­tion sup­port. That mar­riage be­tween tech­nol­o­gy and com­pe­tence will ad­dress cost-ef­fec­tive­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy and, prop­er­ly done, can lead to a suc­cess­ful WASA. Sup­ply, stor­age, de­mand, op­er­a­tions, re­li­a­bil­i­ty is­sues.

The in­evitable hu­man fall­out is a se­ri­ous mat­ter which must be hu­mane­ly dealt with and re­tained em­ploy­ees must be trained for the new WASA and oth­er em­ploy­ees must be trained for tran­si­tion.

But af­ter 60 years of In­de­pen­dence, we can’t con­tin­ue to have re­cur­ring wa­ter prob­lems every day in some com­mu­ni­ty or oth­er.