To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

There is bit­ter irony in the front-page pho­to­graph of yes­ter­day's edi­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian which showed a plain­ly-la­belled WASA truck fill­ing a swim­ming pool in a pri­vate res­i­dence in West­moor­ings on Wednes­day night. WASA's new act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive, Dr Jim Lee Young, and oth­er of­fi­cials of the wa­ter util­i­ty, have spent the last three months try­ing to con­vince res­i­dents of this coun­try to con­serve wa­ter in the face of the most se­ri­ous drought ex­pe­ri­enced in the Caribbean in decades. In its pub­lic cam­paign to en­cour­age con­ser­va­tion of wa­ter, WASA of­fi­cials have held four news con­fer­ences in the last two months at which they have un­der­lined the se­ri­ous­ness of the coun­try's wa­ter prob­lems.

The of­fi­cials have giv­en blow-by-blow ac­counts of the de­plet­ing re­serves of wa­ter in the coun­try's reser­voirs. Giv­en the fact that Trinidad and To­ba­go has not ex­pe­ri­enced any sig­nif­i­cant rain­fall in more than four months, most res­i­dents have been able to con­nect the dots of WASA's pub­lic ap­peals for wa­ter con­ser­va­tion with the prob­a­bil­i­ty that wa­ter may run out be­fore the rains be­gin. Thou­sands of res­i­dents across this coun­try have been forced by the cir­cum­stances to abide by the wa­ter re­stric­tions which have meant the avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter on few­er days than they are ac­cus­tomed. Ad­just­ments have been made to lifestyles and op­er­a­tions at an in­di­vid­ual and cor­po­rate lev­el as the se­ri­ous­ness of taps run­ning dry, even for a few days, has per­me­at­ed the pub­lic con­scious­ness.

The fact that a WASA of­fi­cial was able to re­quest that peo­ple learn to bathe with buck­ets in­stead of in show­ers–a prac­tice that is alien to large swathes of this pop­u­la­tion–and that this ad­vice has been heed­ed was an in­di­ca­tion that WASA had achieved the moral up­per­hand in call­ing for wide­spread sac­ri­fice in the face of cri­sis. WASA has achieved a great deal in the short pe­ri­od that Dr Lee Young has been at its helm. It has for­mu­lat­ed plans to in­crease wa­ter pro­duc­tion, upped its leak de­tec­tion and so­lu­tion game, promised to mit­i­gate the cor­rup­tion that has been en­dem­ic in the in­sti­tu­tion and done an out­stand­ing job of com­mu­ni­cat­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the wa­ter sit­u­a­tion by both its words and its ac­tion. The progress he has made may ac­count for the anger and sense of be­tray­al in Dr Lee Young's voice as he deemed the ac­tions of the WASA truck on Wednes­day night as an "abuse of what we are try­ing to do."

We sup­port his pledge to in­ves­ti­gate what ap­pears to be an un­of­fi­cial use of the util­i­ty's re­sources as this may be in­ter­pret­ed by many read­ing yes­ter­day's lead sto­ry as a dou­ble stan­dard–WASA call­ing on the pub­lic to con­serve, while the util­i­ty is do­ing the op­po­site. The ap­par­ent dou­ble stan­dard must be made worse by the fact that the house in West­moor­ings is be­ing leased by WASA to ac­com­mo­date a for­eign na­tion­al who has been iden­ti­fied to fill the po­si­tion of chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer. What new, for­eign CEO com­ing in­to an or­gan­i­sa­tion like WASA would be com­fort­able know­ing that the util­i­ty, faced with a drought, is us­ing litres of pre­cious wa­ter to fill the pool for him to swim in rather than dis­trib­ut­ing it to some of the thou­sands of res­i­dents who now re­ceive wa­ter once a week.

Knowl­edge­able con­struc­tion sources were quick to dis­miss the util­i­ty's of­fi­cial po­si­tion that a pool full of wa­ter could be need­ed for "con­struc­tion pur­pos­es" in­volv­ing the ren­o­va­tion of a res­i­den­tial house. The per­son re­spon­si­ble for or­der­ing the WASA truck to pump wa­ter in­to the West­moor­ings pool has placed the util­i­ty in an in­vid­i­ous and em­bar­rass­ing po­si­tion. In ef­fect, the per­son has jeop­ar­dised WASA's wa­ter con­ser­va­tion cam­paign by ex­pos­ing the util­i­ty to ridicule and pub­lic cyn­i­cism. Will there be a price to pay for in­flict­ing such mis­chief on the re­ju­ve­nat­ed util­i­ty?