RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

High­er prop­er­ty tax­es will mean high­er wa­ter rates for some cus­tomers in the new year.

This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty Dr Al­lan Poon King who said WASA is fac­ing a debt of $4.2 bil­lion and had em­barked on sev­er­al cost-cut­ting ini­tia­tives.

Speak­ing at the Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture meet­ing on Thurs­day,  Poon King re­vealed that in­creas­es in prop­er­ty val­u­a­tions can lead to in­creased wa­ter rates for some cus­tomers.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion posed by UNC Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein, Dr Poon King said, “ If the prop­er­ty law is amend­ed our rates will be amend­ed ac­cord­ing­ly and in some cas­es, some cus­tomers will be me­tered and the me­tered rates will ap­ply.”

He added, “The new prop­er­ty tax val­ues will af­fect the wa­ter rates.”

Poon King re­vealed that WASA pays US$6 mil­lion month­ly to the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T. He not­ed that the de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter is used on the in­dus­tri­al plants op­er­at­ing at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, not­ing that the Au­thor­i­ty col­lects $25 mil­lion per month for wa­ter.

Fifty-five per cent of the 40 mil­lion gal­lons pro­duced per day by DE­SAL­COTT goes for do­mes­tic con­sump­tion, but Poon King said do­mes­tic cus­tomers pay far less than in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers.

“When (the wa­ter) goes out­side the rate is $3.50 per cu­bic me­tres but for the in­dus­tri­al es­tate, the rate is $12 per cu­bic me­tre,” Dr Poon King re­vealed.

He ex­plained that WASA has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a cut in rev­enues since sev­er­al plants were shut down on the Es­tate.

“There is a deficit in the col­lec­tion of rev­enue from the Es­tate. The ad­di­tion­al wa­ter that was con­sumed by Arcelor Mit­tal goes out now on the do­mes­tic sys­tem but there is not a com­men­su­rate col­lec­tion of mon­ey from those ar­eas. We col­lect less mon­ey since the clo­sure of those plants,” he added.

Dr Poon King al­so said Cab­i­net has ap­point­ed a team to re­view the Au­thor­i­ty and based on the re­port sub­mit­ted, a de­ci­sion will be tak­en as to whether the Au­thor­i­ty will be pri­va­tized.

He re­vealed that the De­sal­cott con­tract has been signed and the gov­ern­ment has to take 40 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day from De­sal­cott un­til 2036. 

He not­ed that the Au­thor­i­ty had tak­en two loans to build sev­er­al waste­water plants.

This in­clud­ed a waste­water project in south­west To­ba­go, the Trinci­ty Waste­water plant, the Mal­abar plant and the San Fer­nan­do waste­water plant, which is 91 per cent com­plet­ed. This plant will be for­mal­ly opened next year.

Asked whether WASA had made any rec­om­men­da­tions for pri­va­ti­za­tion, Poon King said some as­pects of op­er­a­tions were al­ready out­sourced, not­ing that this could ei­ther be in­creased or de­creased in the fu­ture, based on Cab­i­net ap­proval.

Two months ago, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said wa­ter rates have to be ad­just­ed for WASA to run more ef­fi­cient­ly. He said wa­ter rates in T&T was among the cheap­est in the world and that the last ad­just­ment was back in 1993.