The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has so far col­lect­ed just un­der $2 mil­lion of a $20 mil­lion debt owed by cus­tomers.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les, be­tween Au­gust 15 and Oc­to­ber 19, 2022, $1.27 mil­lion was col­lect­ed by debt col­lec­tors Cred­it Chex on be­half of the cash-strapped com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les said WASA is hop­ing to col­lect on the cur­rent $19.88m debt.

“What we are thriv­ing for is for WASA to be­come fi­nan­cial­ly sus­tain­able and not to just de­pend on the Min­istry of Fi­nance for every­thing but that the util­i­ty com­pa­ny should col­lect its rates, and in hav­ing a prop­er rate col­lec­tion process and sys­tem, they can raise the req­ui­site rev­enues so that they can con­tin­ue to im­prove their ser­vices all across T&T,” Gon­za­les said yes­ter­day dur­ing a dis­tri­b­u­tion of cheques cer­e­mo­ny to ap­pli­cants of the Res­i­den­tial Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (REAP) at the his min­istry’s Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters.

In De­cem­ber last year, WASA grant­ed an ex­ten­sion to its orig­i­nal three-month amnesty that was in ef­fect from Ju­ly to Oc­to­ber to cus­tomers ow­ing on their rates. Gon­za­les said he’s hop­ing to fur­ther ex­tend it.

“I in­tend to ask them for a fur­ther ex­ten­sion be­cause my un­der­stand­ing is that cit­i­zens are mak­ing use of the amnesty. They are com­ing for­ward to reg­u­larise their sta­tus,” Gon­za­les said.

As the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) con­tin­ues its con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers next week, Gon­za­les said the RIC should sub­mit its fi­nal work to the Gov­ern­ment by the end of April.

He, how­ev­er, lashed out at what he said is po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the process.

The REAP is in align­ment with the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy to pro­mote sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment by em­pow­er­ing com­mu­ni­ties. It of­fers one-time as­sis­tance to el­i­gi­ble per­sons whose homes have nev­er been wired or where the ex­ist­ing elec­tri­cal wiring is old and faulty and may pose se­vere fire risks, or may not meet the ap­proved elec­tri­cal stan­dards.