Raphael John-Lall

UK-based en­gi­neer and wa­ter man­age­ment con­sul­tant, Dr Ki­ran To­ta-Ma­haraj, hopes that the US$80 mil­lion loan ap­proved in De­cem­ber 2022 by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) to im­prove the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply will soon be used to re­place ag­ing pipelines and oth­er wa­ter re­lat­ed in­fra­struc­ture.

The US$80 mil­lion loan was part of a US$315 mil­lion con­di­tion­al cred­it line for T&T’s Na­tion­al Wa­ter Sec­tor Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­gramme

In a sub­se­quent step to op­er­a­tionalise the loan, in March 2023, the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment signed an­oth­er agree­ment with the IDB for the First In­di­vid­ual Op­er­a­tion for the Na­tion­al Wa­ter Sec­tor Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­gramme to be ex­e­cut­ed by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties with the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), act­ing as a sub-ex­e­cut­ing agency.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, To­ta-Ma­haraj spoke about what the pri­or­i­ties should be, now that the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion have been held.

“Al­lo­ca­tion of these IDB funds for these crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­tures and up­grades to the wa­ter/waste­water as­sets as well as re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion projects must in­clude: re­plac­ing ag­ing pipelines, in­vest­ing in mod­ern tech­nolo­gies for wa­ter and waste­water net­works as well as im­prov­ing the pow­er sup­ply to wa­ter/waste­water fa­cil­i­ties and re­lat­ed in­fra­struc­ture such as dams and reser­voirs. Pri­ori­tis­ing wa­ter/waste­water projects based on their im­pact on over­all ser­vice de­liv­ery, wa­ter sup­ply, waste­water man­age­ment and pub­lic health is es­sen­tial,” he said.

Last week Mon­day, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions were held which saw a re­peat of the 2019 re­sults. The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress each won sev­en of the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

To­ta-Ma­haraj dis­cussed some of the main is­sues that the coun­try faces in the area of in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment and main­te­nance, post-Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

He en­cour­aged new­ly elect­ed of­fi­cials in the bor­ough cor­po­ra­tions to col­lab­o­rate with com­mu­ni­ties on what their needs are.

“Com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment and com­mu­ni­ca­tion: Keep res­i­dents in­formed about in­fra­struc­ture is­sues and re­pair progress. Pro­vide reg­u­lar up­dates through var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, in­clud­ing so­cial me­dia plat­forms, com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings, and newslet­ters. En­cour­age com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to re­port in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems prompt­ly and pro­vide feed­back on ser­vice qual­i­ty.”

He al­so spoke about train­ing and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

“In­vest in train­ing pro­grammes for lo­cal gov­ern­ment staff in­volved in in­fra­struc­ture man­age­ment. En­hance their tech­ni­cal skills and knowl­edge on wa­ter sys­tems, waste­water treat­ment, sus­tain­able drainage sys­tems, pow­er sup­ply, and emer­gency re­sponse to en­sure an ef­fi­cient and com­pe­tent work­force. By adopt­ing these mea­sures, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties in T&T can ef­fec­tive­ly deal with WASA cur­rent chal­lenges such as bro­ken wa­ter mains, pipeline re­pairs, and pow­er sup­ply is­sues, ul­ti­mate­ly en­sur­ing a re­li­able wa­ter and waste­water man­age­ment sys­tem for the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.”

WASA

To­ta-Ma­haraj said WASA con­tin­ues to be plagued with nev­er-end­ing chal­lenges in terms of its per­for­mance and ser­vice de­liv­ery.

“Re­cent Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tees on WASA re­port­ed that WASA is cur­rent­ly too ex­pen­sive to main­tain, too dys­func­tion­al to fix and changes are go­ing to be phased in and phased out by Sep­tem­ber 2023. Rec­om­men­da­tions have been made re­gard­ing a new wa­ter sec­tor mod­el, in­volv­ing the cre­ation of a new wa­ter com­pa­ny, a wa­ter reg­u­la­tor and a wa­ter re­sources man­age­ment.”

He added that be­tween 2022-2023, WASA has ad­just­ed the wa­ter sup­ply sched­ules to var­i­ous ar­eas through­out T&T, in view of pre­vi­ous dry sea­son con­di­tions and the lev­els at its main im­pound­ing reser­voirs.

“Some ar­eas across T&T re­ceive wa­ter dai­ly, while oth­ers re­ceive wa­ter once or twice every 10 days. This is sim­ply not good enough and un­ac­cept­able.”

He said the re­cent pipeline re­pair cri­sis proved very dif­fi­cult for WASA work­ers– a pipeline as­sess­ment and strat­e­gy with the in­tegri­ty of pipes and pump­ing sta­tions is ur­gent­ly need­ed, ad­dress­ing sev­er­al wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion pipelines and waste­water pipelines which have been in op­er­a­tion for more than 45-50 years.

“These wa­ter/waste­water as­sets need to be pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly mon­i­tored and ex­am­ined for leak de­tec­tion, pre­dic­tive main­te­nance regimes when they are ex­pect­ed to fail/ rup­ture.”

He al­so said WASA con­tin­ues to ad­vise cus­tomers to con­serve wa­ter and use it wise­ly, how­ev­er it is quite clear to the pub­lic, the util­i­ty needs all the help and as­sis­tance it can get from lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­per­tise.

“WASA needs to be con­tin­u­ous­ly work­ing with the lo­cal and re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties, bor­ough coun­cils along­side the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties for im­ple­men­ta­tion of im­proved wa­ter treat­ment works and waste­water treat­ment plants across the twin is­land Re­pub­lic with the spe­cif­ic crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture project aims to im­prove the qual­i­ty of waste­water dis­charge in­to the en­vi­ron­ment and re­duce the pub­lic health risks as­so­ci­at­ed with un­treat­ed sew­er­age.”

Lo­cal gov­ern­ment ef­fi­cien­cy

To­ta-Ma­haraj spoke about time­ly and ef­fi­cient man­age­ment which would pre­vent re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions from paving roads and ad­dress­ing main­te­nance on­ly around elec­tion time.

He said im­ple­ment­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures re­quires po­lit­i­cal will, in­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, and sup­port from var­i­ous stake­hold­ers.

He added that by pro­mot­ing trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and long-term plan­ning, T&T can grad­u­al­ly over­come the chal­lenge of elec­tion-time in­fra­struc­ture project pri­ori­ti­sa­tion through the fol­low­ing:

(I). Long-term in­fra­struc­ture plans: En­cour­age the Gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op com­pre­hen­sive, long-term in­fra­struc­ture plans that go be­yond short-term po­lit­i­cal cy­cles. These plans should fo­cus on the coun­try’s over­all de­vel­op­ment needs and pri­ori­tise in­fra­struc­ture projects based on their im­pact and ur­gency, rather than po­lit­i­cal points and po­lit­i­cal gains.

(II). In­de­pen­dent in­fra­struc­ture au­thor­i­ty: Con­sid­er es­tab­lish­ing an in­de­pen­dent in­fra­struc­ture au­thor­i­ty tasked with plan­ning, co­or­di­nat­ing, and im­ple­ment­ing crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture projects. This en­ti­ty can de­politi­cise in­fra­struc­ture de­ci­sions and en­sure projects are ex­e­cut­ed on the ba­sis of mer­it, ex­per­tise, and prop­er eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria.

To­ta-Ma­haraj al­so said it is im­por­tant for the re­spec­tive lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies and elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to iden­ti­fy and pri­ori­tise sev­er­al con­cerns based on the spe­cif­ic needs and de­mands of the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.

At the top of the list is in­fra­struc­ture en­gi­neer­ing and de­vel­op­ment.

“En­sur­ing the main­te­nance and de­vel­op­ment of in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing prop­er road con­struc­tion and road main­te­nance, bridge mon­i­tor­ing, drainage sys­tems, waste­water man­age­ment and im­proved wa­ter util­i­ties with 24 hour pipe borne wa­ter sup­ply, meet­ing the needs of lo­cal res­i­dents, com­mu­ni­ty and busi­ness­es.”

Waste man­age­ment should be an­oth­er pri­or­i­ty for the new­ly elect­ed au­thor­i­ties, he said.

“Ad­dress­ing sol­id waste man­age­ment is­sues, such as col­lec­tion, dis­pos­al, and re­cy­cling, to pro­mote clean­li­ness and en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The time has come for trucks/lor­ries to be col­lect­ing twice week­ly gen­er­al waste, haz­ardous waste and re­cy­clable wastes from both do­mes­tic and com­mer­cial set­tings,” said To­ta-Ma­haraj.