Mar­tin George

?The top brass of WASA's Board and Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment should do them­selves a favour and stop talk­ing rub­bish in pub­lic fo­ra and on tele­vi­sion be­cause the more they talk, the more the pub­lic is prone to won­der, "What A Stu­pid Au­thor­i­ty?" Now, one does not know un­der which rock the up­per man­age­ment of WASA have been liv­ing all these years, but the en­tire pop­u­la­tion, down to the small­est school­child knows that the biggest waster of wa­ter in this coun­try is WASA it­self. So this self-right­eous, sanc­ti­mo­nious cam­paign about at­tack­ing the pub­lic and threat­en­ing them with crim­i­nal charges and pros­e­cu­tion makes you won­der if they have com­plete­ly gone out of their cot­ton pick­ing minds. They have de­ployed their of­fi­cers and have start­ed with the fat, soft, easy tar­gets of West­moor­ings and Good­wood Park for ob­vi­ous PR ef­fect to show that they are not afraid to go af­ter "the high and mighty" and to fore­stall the firestorm of pub­lic crit­i­cism which would have rained down up­on them if they had start­ed for in­stance in Laven­tille or Mor­vant.

Then again, it may very well be that they are afraid to have gone up to some ar­eas in Laven­tille and Mor­vant where the peo­ple don't even know what it is like to get a reg­u­lar sup­ply of wa­ter. Peo­ple there would prob­a­bly have told them ex­act­ly where to get off and would have run them out of the area with their stu­pid­i­ty. Of course, as a na­tion, our cit­i­zens need to be more con­ser­v­a­tive with the use of wa­ter and this should be an on-go­ing na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme by WASA start­ing from the Pri­ma­ry schools, not this knee jerk type of re­ac­tion when we're in a drought by WASA sim­ply look­ing to score cheap pub­lic­i­ty. It is cer­tain­ly back­fir­ing on them big time. This is like Sa­tan try­ing to cor­rect sin. If the WASA po­lice are look­ing for peo­ple to lock up for wast­ing wa­ter, they don't need to go down to Good­wood Park or West­moor­ings ha­rass­ing res­i­dents. All they have to do is go up­stairs in WASA's board­room or ex­ec­u­tive suites and start lock­ing up peo­ple right there. If a house­hold­er has two small leaks on his pipes and yet a mas­sive WASA main is gush­ing mil­lions of gal­lons of wa­ter wast­ing for days and WASA is not fix­ing the leak, who is re­al­ly wast­ing more wa­ter?

Don't in­sult the in­tel­li­gence of the think­ing peo­ple in this na­tion! Let WASA get its own act to­geth­er be­fore it goes on a pul­pit pon­tif­i­cat­ing about wa­ter wastage. Fur­ther­more, the time and ef­fort WASA took to go around to all house­holds and pri­vate prop­er­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­ter­mine this fig­ure of 67 per cent, if WASA was se­ri­ous about fix­ing these leaks, they should have had plumbers go­ing around with these "leak coun­ters" and fix the leaks one time. Why doesn't WASA pro­duce for the pub­lic this re­port and so let us be able to test its ve­rac­i­ty, va­lid­i­ty and test­ing method­ol­o­gy? Why doesn't it let us know which firm was com­mis­sioned to pro­duce this re­port and let the pub­lic be able to analyse and crit­i­cal­ly as­sess this da­ta? This is the In­for­ma­tion Age and we have the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act. Come on, since you raised this hor­net's nest, let's go the whole hog, let's go the dis­tance with it. And while you're at it, let's al­so get ver­i­fied in­for­ma­tion on the vol­ume of wa­ter WASA it­self wastes on a dai­ly ba­sis through its net­work of cor­rod­ed, an­cient rust­ing pipes and mains.

Let's get sta­tis­tics on how long is the av­er­age mean time WASA takes to fix some of its gush­ing mains even af­ter the pub­lic has been call­ing in, com­plain­ing and re­port­ing about the gush­ing main. Let's get the sta­tis­tics on the gush­ing flow of mon­ey, the bil­lions of dol­lars that WASA has wast­ed over the years. You want to talk about leaks, let's talk about WASA's mon­ey leaks. Let's not for­get that the WASA chair­man last week blew the whis­tle on the ex­tent of cor­rup­tion en­dem­ic with­in Wasa's own op­er­a­tions and process­es, so let him who is with­out sin cast the first stone. Don't be com­ing down on the pub­lic when your own house is not in or­der. WASA is not on­ly one of the biggest wasters of wa­ter, it is al­so one of the biggest wasters of mon­ey. So, WASA needs to come down off its high horse, emerge from its ivory tow­ers and come out among the peo­ple.

The well-dressed board mem­bers and ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers should take a walk through ar­eas like Mon­key Town, Pi­paro, Flana­gin Town, Mayo, White­lands, Up­per Laven­tille, Moru­ga, Snake Al­ley, Nev­er Dirty, Cale­do­nia, Mapp Lands, Up­per Bagatelle, Kel­ly Vil­lage, and School Street in Care­nage and so many oth­er ar­eas in this coun­try. Walk through, dressed up in your jack­ets and ties and tell these peo­ple you're pros­e­cut­ing them for wast­ing wa­ter and you would re­alise, the sad truth is that most of these peo­ple don't even have a reg­u­lar sup­ply of wa­ter in the first place. Oh What A Stu­pid Au­thor­i­ty!