Hold­ing po­lit­i­cal of­fice is best de­scribed as a re­lay race, in which the par­ty com­ing in­to of­fice re­ceives the ba­ton from its pre­de­ces­sor. The task of the new ad­min­is­tra­tion is to sur­pass the per­for­mance of the pre­vi­ous in­cum­bent. To quote nov­el­ist C S Lewis, “You can’t go back and change the be­gin­ning, but you can start where you are and change the end­ing.”

In­deed, the par­ty colours are im­ma­te­r­i­al as all par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are meant to wear the na­tion­al colours whether in of­fice or op­po­si­tion. That is what the par­lia­men­tary oath of of­fice re­quires.

In prac­tice, how­ev­er, the in­cum­bents and their sup­port­ers of­ten seek to ridicule or down­play the ef­forts of their pre­de­ces­sors to am­pli­fy their own. This seems to be a fea­ture of many de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tems and is not unique to T&T pol­i­tics. Why? Be­cause po­lit­i­cal par­ties are com­pet­ing for votes and there­fore seek to en­hance their brand im­age at the ex­pense of their po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents. In the process, politi­cians are of­ten very loose with facts in pre­sent­ing the sto­ry that best suits the im­age they wish to por­tray.  

Two weeks ago, op­po­si­tion mem­ber Dr Roodal Mooni­lal was “loose” with his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­cent events and the min­is­ter’s plans for WASA. The Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter in re­but­ting these re­marks spent a long time crit­i­cis­ing the per­for­mance of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­di­cat­ing that it had failed to fol­low through with its plans to ad­dress the is­sue of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s staffing lev­els. He quot­ed ex­ten­sive­ly from cor­re­spon­dence with the fund­ing agency, the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank.

At­tack­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for its man­age­ment of WASA made good the­atre. But the re­al­i­ty is that WASA has not been prop­er­ly man­aged by any ad­min­is­tra­tion, PNM, UNC or NAR. In­deed, there are many is­sues fac­ing the en­ti­ty, not the least of which is that it is in­sol­vent. It can­not sur­vive on its own with­out gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions and can­not un­der­take ma­jor re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works with­out gov­ern­ment sup­port. It can­not op­er­ate on its own be­cause it has nev­er been al­lowed to charge any­thing re­sem­bling the eco­nom­ic cost of pro­vid­ing wa­ter.

The sit­u­a­tion can­not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue like this. Some­thing must be done. What is the plan?

In Oc­to­ber 2021, at the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Pitch Road Mor­vant boost­er sta­tion, Min­is­ter Gon­salves was re­port­ed as say­ing that the re­struc­tur­ing plan was still in the draft­ing stage but would be pre­sent­ed to the Cab­i­net short­ly. The Oc­to­ber 7 News­day quot­ed the min­is­ter’s re­marks as fol­lows: “The tran­si­tion in­to this new wa­ter man­age­ment com­pa­ny we an­tic­i­pate is go­ing to be a three-year process be­gin­ning in the new fi­nan­cial year. It is a mas­sive un­der­tak­ing, per­haps one of the biggest in this coun­try, but we an­tic­i­pate that by 2024, WASA will be in a po­si­tion to meet its op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es…”

In March 2022 in re­spond­ing to a PSA’s ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion, the In­dus­tri­al Court af­firmed that it was the “sole province of the Gov­ern­ment to for­mu­late pol­i­cy on the struc­ture and op­er­a­tions of the au­thor­i­ty, and it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the au­thor­i­ty to op­er­a­tionalise that pol­i­cy…to im­ple­ment it.” How­ev­er, in its plead­ings, the State ad­vised that it had not con­clud­ed the plan. Com­ments from the pre­vi­ous min­is­ter in 2019 sug­gest­ed that the out­line of such a plan was al­ready com­plete.

To date, the min­is­ter’s com­ments on re­struc­tur­ing WASA have fo­cused large­ly on staffing is­sues. But there have been sev­er­al re­trench­ment ex­er­cis­es which pro­vid­ed no per­ma­nent so­lu­tion. Ad­dress­ing staffing lev­els and re­or­gan­is­ing de­part­ments whilst ne­go­ti­at­ing with the rel­e­vant unions alone will be a time-con­sum­ing ex­er­cise. But this is on­ly one phase of a mul­ti­phase process, al­beit a very im­por­tant one, as the hu­man di­men­sion is a crit­i­cal part of the ex­er­cise. Un­like, Petrotrin, WASA’s op­er­a­tions are dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate.

Trans­form­ing WASA, how­ev­er, is not sim­ply a mat­ter of stream­lin­ing staffing lev­els. It is a mul­ti­phase ex­er­cise which will re­quire con­sid­er­able time, man­age­ment ef­fort and po­lit­i­cal will. Skip­ping steps in the process will on­ly give the il­lu­sion of speed. Re­la­tion­ships must be built, cap­i­tal projects pri­ori­tised, pro­cure­ment hur­dles crossed, new wa­ter rates agreed, tech­nol­o­gy changed, peo­ple trained, and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al dis­ci­pline in­stilled and re­in­forced.  The min­is­ter’s Oc­to­ber 2021 com­ments an­tic­i­pat­ed a 36-month time­line. One year lat­er the plan is yet to be pre­sent­ed or ne­go­ti­at­ed with the unions and elec­tions are due in Au­gust 2025, 36 months away.

The phas­es iden­ti­fied above re­late to the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions and do not ad­dress the cus­tomer (the pub­lic). A for­mer WASA CEO is quot­ed in the Guardian (2020/6/13) as fol­lows…"The lack of po­lit­i­cal will to grasp the bull by the horns stems from the fact that wa­ter is seen as a right, and no gov­ern­ment wants to be seen to in­crease rates sig­nif­i­cant­ly so close to a gen­er­al elec­tion. With­out such rate in­creas­es, WASA will al­ways be rev­enue con­strained and un­able to in­vest in their in­fra­struc­ture..."

T&T does not need an­oth­er ex­pen­sive cos­met­ic PR ex­er­cise such as the re­struc­tur­ing of NHA in­to HDC. WASA needs a com­pre­hen­sive trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cise with clear ob­jec­tives and a time­line to im­prove ser­vice and de­liv­ery. Peo­ple want a re­li­able, af­ford­able and ac­ces­si­ble wa­ter sup­ply, not emp­ty promis­es or po­lit­i­cal the­atre.