William Shake­speare, in his play Ham­let, not­ed that “Some­thing is rot­ten in the state of Den­mark …” (Act-I, Scene-IV). It was a ref­er­ence to how bad things were in Den­mark at that time, in­clud­ing cor­rupt ruler­ship.

The phrase is an apt ref­er­ence to what is hap­pen­ing at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, a pub­lic util­i­ty that is in the red and where it seems things are so chaot­ic it is now un­der the radar of Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

Cit­i­zens will not be shocked a util­i­ty that had nu­mer­ous chair­men and boards over the years, not to men­tion changes in line min­is­ters, was al­lowed to get to the state that it is cur­rent­ly at. As a Trinida­di­an, you would have to be blind and deaf to be un­aware that bil­lions spent at WASA have done lit­tle to ease the bur­den of a pop­u­la­tion that con­stant­ly com­plains about the lack of a pipebourne wa­ter sup­ply.

A 2016 au­dit un­earthed nu­mer­ous in­ci­dents of fi­nan­cial dis­crep­an­cies, the end re­sult of which was the haem­or­rhag­ing of mil­lions of dol­lars in salaries and over­time.

There are sev­er­al con­cern­ing rev­e­la­tions in the re­port, not least of which is the al­le­ga­tion that in 2012, a man­date was giv­en to re­duce staff from 5,000 to 2,500. Dur­ing this ex­er­cise, 1,000 em­ploy­ees ac­cept­ed VSEP at a cost to tax­pay­ers of $360 mil­lion.

By 2015, how­ev­er, WASA’s work­force had bal­looned right back to the orig­i­nal 5,000 fig­ure, which trig­gered the 2016 au­dit.

It is dis­heart­en­ing that those charged with the busi­ness of sav­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and get­ting things on a fi­nan­cial­ly even keel, seemed hell-bent on en­sur­ing the util­i­ty con­tin­ued to op­er­ate with un­sus­tain­able staffing lev­els.

How else can one ex­plain why, af­ter $360 mil­lion was spent on VSEP pay­ments, salaries at the util­i­ty in­creased by $27 mil­lion? Retroac­tive pay­ments of ad­di­tion­al com­mut­ed over­time hours and spe­cial project al­lowances to six mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) WASA sec­tion were al­so al­leged­ly ap­proved be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2013, to De­cem­ber 31, 2015. How did no one in au­thor­i­ty ask a ques­tion? Who was guard­ing the guards?

It is clear that bad man­age­ment and cor­rupt prac­tices at WASA cost this coun­try bil­lions and it must be stopped. The largesse that flowed like wa­ter there ben­e­fit­ted a few but nev­er brought re­lief to thou­sands of cit­i­zens.

Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les may be on the right track and we hope the au­dits and in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to WASA will be just the start. One hopes there is no pol­i­tics at play in the au­dits be­ing made pub­lic.

What has hap­pened at WASA should not be swept un­der the car­pet. The full brunt of the law must be brought to bear on those found guilty of wrong­do­ing and let the chips fall where they may.

We hope that Min­is­ter Gon­za­les does not stop at WASA. Bring on the au­dits at T&TEC and oth­er pub­lic util­i­ties. Let the coun­try know that you are se­ri­ous about stamp­ing out cor­rup­tion wher­ev­er it ex­ists. There has been too much wastage in this coun­try to the detri­ment of tax­pay­ers.