The Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) has promised to crack down on people who have been stealing water through illegal connections across the country.
The tough talk came from Public Utilities Minister Robert Le Hunte as WASA moves to zero in on the number of illegal connections throughout the country.
“WASA is on to you. We are coming to people who are using WASA’s water and not paying. WASA needs to collect all the revenue it can,” Le Hunte said during at interview with Guardian Media at his One Alexandra Office, Woodbrook.
He said it was unfair for some people to get water and not pay for it at all via illegal connections.
“The only way we can solve this problem is we need all hands on deck.”
Le Hunte called on people who know of illegal connections to report it to WASA.
“You may not want to squeal on your neighbour... but you are in effect helping for the inefficiencies in WASA because we are unable to get the money to do all the things that we want to do,” the minister said.
Le Hunte admitted that WASA has several challenges which has to be dealt with one at a time.
“Fixing WASA is like fixing a plane that is in the air. You can’t land it. You have to kind of fix it incrementally otherwise the whole plane will crash.”
He spoke about WASA’s non-revenue water (NRW) which is water being provided but no revenue collected.
NRW contributes to pipe leaks as well as people stealing and wasting water.
Stealing of water, Le Hunte said was part of WASA’s issues.
In December 2018, Le Hunte said WASA introduced an amnesty programme which ended in February of this year.
The amnesty targeted four groups of people-individuals who had an illegal water connection, persons who had an existing water supply but were not registered as WASA’s customers, homeowners who have swimming pools but had not indicated this to the authority and businesses that are VAT registered but classified in WASA’s system as residential customers.
In total, Le Hunte said 856 customers “in different categories came in” for the amnesty.
Of this figure, he said 796 were unregistered customers.
“We had approximately 56 people with (swimming) pools coming in and people who were running businesses that represented a small amount.”
Following the amnesty, WASA collected $1.1 million, Le Hunte said.
“And in addition to that, we expect some of the revenue to be derived down the road.”
Le Hunte said WASA has been working on a string of strategies to get other people to come in, refusing to reveal what those measures are.
“We are now putting district metres so we know the amount of water that is particularly going into an area versus the revenue (collected).”
Le Hunte said when the country had money a number of things we did not do.
The Government, he said has been saddled with doing more with less.
“So we are actively attempting to deal with the number of customers that are allegedly utilising water without authorisation over and above what we have already collected from the amnesty. Utilising the benefit of the district metres we are going to be in a better position to be able to attack the ones that are out there and did not comply.”
He refused to identify the locations of the illegal connections.
Le Hunte said WASA will aggressively go out for those who did not comply.
“I think we have done enough via amnesties. I am not envisaging another amnesty.”
When Guardian Media identified Windy Hill in Arouca- a squatting settlement- as having several illegal water connections, Le Hunte said that was one particular area that WASA has focused on in improving its water supply and to regularised customers who have begun to pay for water.
Asked if WASA had received reports of citizens cutting and feeding into WASA’s pipelines to access free water, Le Hunte said he has heard “about some of those. I have reported them to WASA’s authorities and the WASA police...and I know the police have been investigating those when we get those reports.”
He said the illegal connections was between eight to ten per cent of WASA’s NRW.
WASA produces and distributes 240 million gallons of water daily.
“So if you consider NRW as being about 100 to 120 million gallons of water...if you say ten per cent of that water is really NRW through illegal connections you get an idea what that is. So I would say somewhere between 12 to 20 millions of gallons of water is probably lost in that vicinity...through that particular aspect.”
T&T citizens use almost 90 gallons of water daily, Le Hunte said noting that the international standard is 44 gallons.
WASA’s tariff showed that the average household pays $3 a day for the essential commodity.