On World Water Day, which was commemorated yesterday, the biggest trending story in T&T was about a judgment delivered against the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) in the Port-of-Spain High Court.
That alone sums up the state of the public utility which has consistently failed for decades to provide a safe and reliable supply of water.
WASA has been ordered to pay a little over $1.7 million in compensation to Janet Rousseau, whose Upper Pashley Street, Success Village, Laventille home was destroyed by a burst water main.
Ms Rousseau first noticed problems caused by the leaking main shortly after constructing her home in December 2003. However, it took four years for the leak to be repaired and by that time, irreparable damage had been done to the house.
Unfortunately, Rousseau’s case is not an isolated one. It is one of several worrying examples of how WASA has failed to provide the service it was set up to do.
Yesterday, on World Water Day, the United Nations put the spotlight on accelerating change to solve the global water and sanitation crisis, but WASA’s capacity to facilitate this type of transformation remains very much in doubt.
While the global campaign, Be the Change, placed the onus on individuals to change the way they use, consume and manage water, WASA’s chronic malfunctions make it difficult to achieve that objective.
In this nation where leaking pipelines and dry faucets are the norm rather than the exception, consumers have very few options when it comes to managing their water usage.
WASA has become so well known for underperformance that a recent claim by Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales that a backlog of over 5,000 leaks had been eradicated was greeted with widespread scepticism.
Also, citizens are still not convinced there has been an increase in water production, although Minister Gonzales claims this has been achieved because 20 million gallons of water a day are no longer being lost to leaks.
On World Water Day, many WASA customers were without a pipe-borne supply and leaking transmission lines were detected in many parts of the country.
Most citizens still see WASA as the cash-strapped entity plagued by financial mismanagement, corruption and low productivity described in painful detail in a 135-page report submitted to Cabinet following a directive by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley over a year ago.
Minister Gonzales, now overseeing the implementation of a plan to turn around WASA, should be well aware of the need to deliver measurable results.
There has hardly been a time, since WASA’s establishment in September 1965, that it has not been plagued with inefficiencies. Numerous plans to rehabilitate it, often at great cost to taxpayers, have yielded little or no results.
The most recent, a three-year $1.2 billion Water Sector Modernisation Programme (WSMP), floundered about a decade ago.
With such a track record, it is no wonder the Minister’s positive reports and optimistic projections have not been enthusiastically received by citizens.
Nothing less than tangible evidence of WASA’s transformation—a 24/7 supply of pipe-borne water and a marked decrease in ruptured mains and leaking transmission lines—will do after almost six decades of failures.
Hopefully, there will be clear signs of a turnaround by the time World Water Day 2024 comes around.