Yvonne?Ba­boolal

For­mer min­is­ter of the en­vi­ron­ment and wa­ter re­sources, Gan­ga Singh, says he fears no au­dit in­to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) be­cause "all process­es were fol­lowed" un­der his tenure.

He made the claim yes­ter­day as spec­u­la­tion con­tin­ued that the fire which hit the Record De­part­ment at the util­i­ty's St Joseph head­quar­ters may have been ma­li­cious­ly set to de­stroy crit­i­cal records ahead of a pend­ing au­dit.

Not­ing he was hap­py no one was in­jured in the "mys­te­ri­ous" fire which de­stroyed most of the sec­ond floor of the ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex, where con­fi­den­tial "Blue Files" con­tain­ing in­for­ma­tion about gov­ern­ment con­tracts were kept, he in­sist­ed all was above board in the award of con­tracts when he was min­is­ter.

"All process­es were fol­lowed. I have no prob­lem with re­spect to any kind of au­dit," he said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.Singh said the new Gov­ern­ment was mere­ly flex­ing its mus­cles with the au­dit but claimed it was al­so with­hold­ing vi­tal in­for­ma­tion with re­spect to it.

"The au­dit is a mat­ter for the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion. They are demon­strat­ing they are in charge," he added.He said, how­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment sim­ply an­nounced there was go­ing to be an au­dit in­to WASA with­out dis­clos­ing how much that au­dit would cost or its terms of ref­er­ence.

Singh is al­so call­ing for a speedy end to in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cause of the fire."My hope is they find the cause of the fire­ly quick­ly to put an end to spec­u­la­tion in the pub­lic do­main," he said.

Fire broke out in Block B, Build­ing Nine, in the main four-storey build­ing at 4.45 pm Tues­day af­ter most of the em­ploy­ees had al­ready left work.The sec­ond floor, where files which may be re­lat­ed to gov­ern­ment con­tracts award­ed for wa­ter projects and pri­vate de­vel­op­ment en­ter­pris­es were kept, was com­plete­ly de­stroyed.

WASA's cor­re­spon­dence with cus­tomers and the com­pa­ny's In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems De­part­ment were al­so kept on that floor.

Work­ers said yes­ter­day the sec­ond floor fire "touched" the floors above and be­neath it, which were al­so filled with smoke and were dam­aged by wa­ter when fire of­fi­cers put out the blaze. Work­ers have been sent home "un­til fur­ther no­tice."

The fire came af­ter a new board ap­point­ed by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment or­dered an au­dit in­to WASA be­cause of "cer­tain ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties" it ob­served. Ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the util­i­ty were de­mot­ed or sent on leave to fa­cil­i­tate that process.

Af­ter Tues­day's fire, spec­u­la­tion was rife among work­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic that it was an at­tempt to de­stroy files re­lat­ing to ques­tion­able con­tracts award­ed dur­ing the last ad­min­is­tra­tion.Un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, WASA, which was un­der Singh's port­fo­lio, em­barked on a wa­ter for all pro­gramme.

Singh had said the then gov­ern­ment had "made sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments to im­prove avail­abil­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy of fresh, clean wa­ter for fam­i­lies in T&T."

He said then "over 1,000 kilo­me­tres of pipeline have helped to in­crease the num­ber of homes re­ceiv­ing wa­ter from un­der 17 per cent when we took of­fice in 2010 to over 74 per cent to­day."