A US$72 mil­lion con­tract with De­sal­cott, that has been in place since 1999, has caused the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty to go­ing in­to bank­rupt­cy.

That con­tract comes to an end in 2036, 17 years from now.

The rev­e­la­tion was made yes­ter­day by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley who was speak­ing dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee Meet­ing in Par­lia­ment as the de­bate on the 2020 Bud­get con­tin­ued yes­ter­day.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment (MP) for Tabaquite, Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, was ques­tion­ing Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte when Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley in­ter­ject­ed, say­ing he want­ed to set the record straight on the De­sal­cott/WASA con­tract.

Ram­bachan was ques­tion­ing why the gov­ern­ment was ne­go­ti­at­ing a loan to pay De­sal­cott in­stead of al­lo­cat­ing mon­ey for the sup­ply through WASA’s re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

WASA was giv­en a $1.6 Bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in the 2020 bud­get.

Row­ley said be­fore the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion en­tered in­to the con­tract, the is­sue of whether de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter would be used to sup­ply res­i­den­tial cus­tomers, as is be­ing done now, was raised.

In 1999, WASA first con­tract­ed De­sal­cott to pur­chase 24 mil­li­on gal­lons per day.

But by No­vem­ber 2012, the agree­ment with De­sal­cott was amend­ed and the new sale agree­ment in­creased its pro­duc­tion from 24 mil­li­on gal­lons per day to 40 mil­li­on gal­lons per day.

The prime min­ster ex­plained this ex­pan­sion was ex­pect­ed to be in­creased in­cre­men­tal­ly over a 13-month pe­ri­od, with the de­liv­ery of wa­ter in­creas­ing over this pe­ri­od up to 40 mil­li­on gal­lons per day by De­cem­ber 2013.

“When we went in­to de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter this prob­lem that we are now fac­ing was raised as a po­ten­tial and the ques­tion is on the Hansard as to whether this de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter will en­ter the do­mes­tic sup­ply and the an­swer was no,” Row­ley said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said when De­sal­cott was asked to sup­ply res­i­den­tial cus­tomers, the au­thor­i­ty paid and is con­tin­u­ing to pay the ul­ti­mate price.

“That project has bank­rupt­ed WASA per­ma­nent­ly and we now have to bor­row mon­ey be­cause where we were earn­ing mon­ey in Point Lisas we now have to find mon­ey to pay and that has put WASA in a per­ma­nent bank­rupt­cy,” Row­ley said.

But Op­po­si­tion MP Gan­ga Singh, a for­mer En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Min­is­ter, hit back at the gov­ern­ment, say­ing it was the PNM’s Patrick Man­ning-led ad­min­is­tra­tion that in­creased the amount of wa­ter from 24 mil­lion gal­lons to 45 mil­lion gal­lons a day, in the agree­ment with De­sal­cott.

Singh said Man­ning had an­nounced plans to build five de­sali­na­tion plants across T&T.

“When I hear these born-again, evan­gel­i­cal ap­proach that they de­ny the ex­is­tence of their de­ci­sion mak­ing, you would re­call that in 2010 Mr Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning had plans to build five de­sali­na­tion plants across this coun­try,” Singh said.

He added, “At that time it was af­ford­able, now cir­cum­stances have changed and like a lot of peo­ple who get in trou­ble with the #MeToo move­ment, the re­al­i­ty to­day is quite dif­fer­ent.”