DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is con­sid­er­ing sus­pend­ing the li­cences of the six ma­jor wa­ter bot­tling com­pa­nies in T&T, ac­cord­ing to a source at the util­i­ty.

The source said yes­ter­day that the amount of wa­ter used by these com­pa­nies, which re­quired li­cences to ex­tract wa­ter from the wells, could great­ly as­sist in con­serv­ing the re­main­ing potable sup­ply from WASA's dams and reser­voirs. Even though some of the com­pa­nies had sourced their own well sup­plies, they still had to pay WASA a li­cence fee to ex­tract wa­ter. How­ev­er, the source said the au­thor­i­ty was al­ready dis­cussing the is­sue with the bot­tling com­pa­nies. The source said sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sands of gal­lons of wa­ter was ex­tract­ed dai­ly by the bev­er­age in­dus­try, as each of the six com­pa­nies had its own well. "The wa­ter com­pa­nies' prof­its were in the mil­lions, com­pared to the minis­cule amount they were pay­ing WASA." But the source did not say how soon this would hap­pen, and for how long the com­pa­nies' li­cences would be sus­pend­ed.

How­ev­er, some wa­ter com­pa­nies said they had al­ready im­posed their own re­stric­tions and any­thing fur­ther would be crit­i­cal. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, one com­pa­ny said it had de­cid­ed to cut its pro­duc­tion by 50 per cent. The of­fi­cial, who asked not to be named, said: "It was our ini­tia­tive to cut our pro­duc­tion in half, in light of the sit­u­a­tion. "We are con­cerned about the sit­u­a­tion as every­one else, and have de­cid­ed to take such a de­ci­sion." But the of­fi­cial said it was not an easy de­ci­sion, be­cause it had im­pact­ed neg­a­tive­ly on sales. The com­pa­ny al­so said that as a re­sult of halv­ing pro­duc­tion, they had to re­duce sig­nif­i­cant­ly the hours of work for em­ploy­ees.

"This was some­thing that we did not want to do, but due to the sit­u­a­tion, we had no choice. We did not want to fire any­one, so we re­duced the hours of work to fa­cil­i­tate all em­ploy­ees." Asked if WASA im­posed fur­ther re­stric­tions, how would the com­pa­ny deal with it, the of­fi­cial said: "It would have a ter­ri­ble im­pact on our sales." Ke­sha­va Go­sine, Blue Wa­ter's qual­i­ty as­sur­ance per­son­nel, said WASA had al­ready im­posed re­stric­tions on the com­pa­ny.