From the be­gin­ning of self-gov­ern­ment to to­day, var­i­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions have promised that this coun­try’s wa­ter woes will soon be a thing of the past.

In be­tween the many ad­min­is­tra­tions that at­tempt­ed to ful­fil this promise, we have had al­le­ga­tions of in­com­pe­tence, in­ef­fi­cien­cy, and cor­rup­tion. It mat­ters not which po­lit­i­cal par­ty has been in pow­er.

The re­sults have al­ways been the same, with a few in­ter­im fix­es un­til the next cri­sis. There have been sev­er­al at­tempts to re­de­fine WASA ei­ther through new man­age­ment, new boards, or promis­es of sys­temic re­form. None have achieved long-term suc­cess.

Cli­mate change is up­on us, and with it, changes in the glob­al weath­er pat­terns with po­ten­tial cat­a­stroph­ic dam­age to the en­vi­ron­ment. Wa­ter is cru­cial to ex­is­tence and its mis­man­age­ment has sig­nif­i­cant health im­pli­ca­tions.

Prop­er cu­ra­tion and use of nat­ur­al wa­ter re­sources is there­fore a pri­or­i­ty. In May, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties not­ed the weak sup­ply sit­u­a­tion as reser­voir lev­els had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed to less than 40 per cent of ca­pac­i­ty.

This month, a mere four months lat­er, the Min­is­ter of Works is blam­ing flood­ing on cli­mate change. He has not ad­dressed main­te­nance or in­ad­e­quate drainage down­stream of new pop­u­la­tion set­tle­ments, changes that have af­fect­ed wa­ter runoff ca­pac­i­ty.

Com­pound­ing this sit­u­a­tion is the shut­down of the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant for re­pairs. Start­ing yes­ter­day, more than an es­ti­mat­ed 500,000 peo­ple—a third of the coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion—were af­fect­ed by a min­i­mum three-day week­end shut­down. This is to fa­cil­i­tate net­work main­te­nance and ef­fi­cien­cy up­grades, in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of me­ters and valves. This is not rock­et sci­ence.

There is nev­er a good time to de­prive cit­i­zens of a wa­ter sup­ply. Some peo­ple will be in­con­ve­nienced from time to time. But one-third of the pop­u­la­tion? Is the plant de­sign so bad that par­tial up­grades can­not be im­ple­ment­ed with­out shut­ting down the en­tire sys­tem?

Oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive re­forms aimed at mak­ing the sys­tem more ef­fi­cient have been tried be­fore. These have in­clud­ed chang­ing the man­age­ment, down­siz­ing and im­ple­ment­ing wa­ter me­ters to help con­sumers man­age their con­sump­tion.

All have failed or the im­ple­ment­ed process­es were trun­cat­ed. In 2020, the then min­is­ter of pub­lic util­i­ties re­signed in what ap­peared to be a dis­pute over pol­i­cy and the im­ple­men­ta­tion timetable for a turn­around plan for WASA. This was four months be­fore the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

The gen­er­al elec­tion is now 12 to 15 months away. What sys­temic and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al changes can be achieved in this pe­ri­od? Re­duc­ing wa­ter leaks from an es­ti­mat­ed 50 per cent to 30 per cent will re­quire ma­jor road works and traf­fic dis­rup­tions.

Pot­holes and sink­holes are pri­mar­i­ly due to leak­ages as ma­jor wa­ter lines are buried be­neath our roads. In some cas­es, hous­es have been lost to these leaks, and court ac­tion has been re­quired to force WASA to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Un­der­tak­ing wa­ter works al­so means that the in­flu­ence of gangs and their at­tempt to ex­tort con­trac­tors must be mit­i­gat­ed. In ad­di­tion to wa­ter leaks, cur­fews and shut­downs, the coun­try has al­so been af­fect­ed in re­cent weeks by a dengue out­break, with sev­er­al peo­ple dy­ing.

While blame can­not be laid at the feet of the health min­is­ter, it does re­flect weak poli­cies at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el. We need to find ways to min­imise the fre­quen­cy of these woes.