AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Lengthy re­sponse times to wa­ter leaks will re­port­ed­ly be a thing of the past, ac­cord­ing to the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

This is be­cause the au­thor­i­ty claims that a back­log of more than 5,000 leaks through­out the years has been erad­i­cat­ed.

Speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the $10 mil­lion pro­cure­ment of 12 mi­ni ex­ca­va­tors by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties yes­ter­day, WASA chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga re­vealed that there will now be faster re­sponse times in the fu­ture.

“We have been at­tack­ing those leaks ag­gres­sive­ly and with the pro­cure­ment of these mi­ni ex­ca­va­tors, these pieces of equip­ment would go a long way in im­prov­ing our re­sponse time. We have cleared a huge part of the back­log of leaks that we now have. We are very hope­ful that by the end of this month, March, we would on­ly be look­ing at deal­ing with cur­rent leaks,” Nan­ga said.

Ac­cord­ing to WASA, the out­stand­ing re­ports of leaks now stand at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 700. By April, the au­thor­i­ty is con­fi­dent they will be able to re­spond to all leak re­ports with­in 24 to 48 hours.

Nan­ga added that WASA has re­cent­ly de­vel­oped and im­ple­ment­ed an ex­ten­sive main­te­nance pol­i­cy for the new­ly ac­quired equip­ment.

“Un­like in the past, this would be tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars well spent. And as long as this board is in place un­der the stew­ard­ship of this min­is­ter, we will en­sure that these pieces of equip­ment, as all the oth­er pieces of equip­ment that we are about to ac­quire, would be prop­er­ly tak­en care of and re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the mem­bers of the pub­lic and to­wards im­prov­ing our ser­vice.”

Mean­while, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to en­sure na­tion­wide wa­ter pro­duc­tion is in­creased, since there is no longer a 20-mil­lion-gal­lon dai­ly wa­ter wastage.

He said as the Gov­ern­ment awaits the re­port from the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) on pro­posed hikes in elec­tric­i­ty rates, an in­crease in both wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty rates was like­ly.

“The RIC has not been com­ply­ing with the law with re­spect to both util­i­ty com­pa­nies. They suf­fered tremen­dous­ly be­cause their rates are not in align­ment with the eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances,” Gon­za­les said.

“WASA and T&TEC have not been per­form­ing fi­nan­cial­ly and it will ob­vi­ous­ly have an im­pact on the abil­i­ty of the au­thor­i­ty and the com­mis­sion to pro­vide a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply and elec­tric­i­ty ser­vice.”

The $3 mil­lion T&TEC Am­phibi­ous Re­sponse ve­hi­cle was al­so com­mis­sioned yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing its ar­rival in the coun­try last year No­vem­ber.