JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 11, 2025

Who is the wajang?

by

1877 days ago
20200521

Patrick Man­ning must be laugh­ing some­where.

“This ad­min­is­tra­tion was elect­ed to re­store in­tegri­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in pub­lic life…” said Dr Row­ley in his ad­dress to the na­tion on 29/12/15 set­ting the tone for his ad­min­is­tra­tion. That is what lead­ers do; they set the tim­ing, tone, and tem­po for the or­gan­i­sa­tions that they lead. And they lead by ex­am­ple.

We will nev­er know what tran­spired in the meet­ing be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and Venezuela VP Del­cy Ro­driguez. How­ev­er, by con­firm­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty of the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary’s de­tailed in­struc­tions to the chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter has al­so con­firmed that the com­po­si­tion of the en­tourage was known in ad­vance. Since Min­is­ter Young does not deal with “un­der­lings”, both he and Den­nis Moses, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter ought to have known that in­for­ma­tion. At best it is ev­i­dence of a mon­u­men­tal foul up jus­ti­fy­ing the Ex­press May 10 ed­i­to­r­i­al head­line “Alarm­ing laps­es at the top”.

Laps­es? The facts are un­sup­port­ive of the sto­ry­line that says the pur­pose of the meet­ing was to dis­cuss COVID-19. When pressed we are told that it was none of our busi­ness. Hard­ly an ex­am­ple of in­tegri­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Small won­der that the press has seized on the ship­ment of fu­el al­leged­ly “di­vert­ed” to Venezuela be­cause of the prox­im­i­ty of its oc­cur­rence to the meet­ing, and the as­ton­ish­ing­ly porous web of ex­pla­na­tions about said meet­ing.

The ex­pla­na­tion of Le Hunte’s res­ig­na­tion com­ing so soon af­ter these events are a vari­a­tion on a theme. The let­ter of res­ig­na­tion print­ed in the press speaks to a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion with re­spect to a Cab­i­net Note out­lin­ing a com­pre­hen­sive plan to achieve a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply. F&GP is a cab­i­net sub­com­mit­tee used to fi­nesse and mas­sage com­pli­cat­ed notes in­to shape to achieve con­sen­sus. The note seems to have been fast tracked to cab­i­net with­out that lev­el of dis­cus­sion.

In the ver­sion told to Ria Taitt by a se­nior cab­i­net source (prime min­is­ter?) there was a heat­ed dis­cus­sion. Oth­er re­ports sug­gest that Le Hunte re­mained calm. The prime min­is­ter ob­ject­ed to the note based on the po­lit­i­cal im­pact of me­ter­ing with­out an ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply.

The fi­nance min­is­ter’s ob­jec­tions rest­ed on the fact that the ex­pense was not bud­get­ed and that the pan­dem­ic may re­quire ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture in­creas­ing bor­row­ing re­quire­ments cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al risk ex­po­sure that could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing. Re­al­ly?

The ex­pla­na­tions are du­plic­i­tous. First, fix­ing WASA is im­por­tant and was iden­ti­fied as a pri­or­i­ty in 2018 bud­get. Said Mr Im­bert, “the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), re­ceives an av­er­age an­nu­al sub­sidy of over $2 bil­lion a year to as­sist it in pay­ing salaries, ser­vic­ing debt, pay­ing sup­pli­ers, car­ry­ing out re­pairs and un­der­tak­ing its de­vel­op­ment projects. How­ev­er, de­spite such mas­sive fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from the State, WASA is fi­nan­cial­ly chal­lenged and strug­gles to pay its bills…dai­ly.”

Sec­ond, this kind of un­der­tak­ing can­not sim­ply re­volve around me­ter­ing. It must in­clude pres­sure man­age­ment, in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty, de­mand man­age­ment is­sues and re­fur­bish­ment/ re­plac­ing of the ex­ist­ing pipeline in­fra­struc­ture which is es­ti­mat­ed to lose 40-50 per cent of the wa­ter it trans­ports. Me­ter­ing by it­self would en­cour­age end user ef­fi­cien­cy, but it could not pre­vent wa­ter loss.

Third, the me­ter­ing rec­om­men­da­tion is over 30 years old, dat­ing back to stud­ies com­plet­ed in the late 1980s and on­ly par­tial­ly im­ple­ment­ed. The Pt Lisas plants are me­tered and pay the full price of de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter in US dol­lars. Now that sev­en plants are closed or idled, that places ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on WASA (gov­ern­ment) which has a take or pay con­tract.

Fourth, a project of this na­ture fi­nanced by the IADB ( In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank) would be sub­ject to strict pro­cure­ment guide­lines and a front end load­ing ap­proach ie that there would ro­bust plan­ning and de­sign up­front to avoid the dif­fi­cul­ties ex­em­pli­fied by the NGC waste­water pipeline.

Projects of this size, as well as the loan fi­nanc­ing, would be done in phas­es. Any bor­row­ing agreed to­day would be phased in over sev­er­al years as part of a cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture pro­gramme and in­clude a mora­to­ri­um.

The ob­jec­tions can be eas­i­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ed with­in these mech­a­nisms. How­ev­er, it is well known that Mr Im­bert has a strong aver­sion to mul­ti­lat­er­al pro­cure­ment guide­lines, and this may be the re­al cause of his ob­jec­tions which he cam­ou­flages as a drain on the coun­try’s fi­nances.

Mr. Im­bert is the equiv­a­lent of a “stop­per” in foot­ball. Ad­dress­ing NIB’s vi­a­bil­i­ty is avoid­ed. He has stalled the Pro­cure­ment Act, and ig­nored the Eco­nom­ic Ad­vi­so­ry Board lead­ing to its dis­so­lu­tion. The im­ple­men­ta­tion com­mit­tee failed at the gate. And the Com­mit­tee of 22? Le Hunte was sim­ply its first ca­su­al­ty.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored