At the end of an in­ter­view with a jour­nal­ist at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on the pub­lic hol­i­day for Di­vali, Oc­to­ber 31, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, Mar­vin Gon­za­les takes out his mo­bile phone and di­als a num­ber. Af­ter ring­ing nine times, the op­er­a­tor at the WASA call cen­tre an­swers. With­out iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as the line min­is­ter for the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Gon­za­les tells the op­er­a­tor that he would like to re­port a leak in the QRC round­about in St Clair from which litres and litres of wa­ter are be­ing wast­ed.

The op­er­a­tor takes the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Gon­za­les and gives him a num­ber, which al­lows the util­i­ty to track the pace of its re­sponse to calls re­port­ing leaks or prob­lems with wa­ter sup­ply.

The next day the leak was fixed.

For Gon­za­les, that in­ter­ac­tion with the call-cen­tre op­er­a­tor epit­o­mis­es the changes that have oc­curred at WASA. Those changes in­clude a new stan­dard of one minute for the op­er­a­tors to an­swer the calls of WASA’s cus­tomers.

Be­fore the op­er­a­tions of WASA’s call cen­tre were im­proved—by in­creas­ing the num­ber of op­er­a­tors and en­hanc­ing their train­ing­—one of the peren­ni­al com­plaints of WASA’s cus­tomers was the length of time it took for a call cen­tre op­er­a­tor to an­swer them.

Asked if he thinks WASA has been trans­formed, or is in the process of be­ing trans­formed, Gon­za­les said: “I would pre­fer to say that WASA is in the process of be­ing trans­formed and, al­though there is still work to be done, we are al­ready see­ing some pos­i­tive re­sults.”

For WASA to be ful­ly trans­formed, he said, it would have to im­prove the im­ple­men­ta­tion of its cap­i­tal in­vest­ment bud­get.

“Once these projects are brought to fruition, once we com­plete the re­struc­tur­ing of the man­age­ment of the or­gan­i­sa­tion and once we dri­ve and ful­ly com­plete the au­toma­tion and the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the util­i­ty and once it can ful­ly earn the trust of the pop­u­la­tion, as cyn­i­cal as the pop­u­la­tion might be to change, we would be well on the way to the pop­u­la­tion be­liev­ing WASA is a state com­pa­ny that cares about its cus­tomers,” Gon­za­les said.

Part of the trans­for­ma­tion of WASA is be­ing fund­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

In De­cem­ber 2020, the IDB ap­proved an US$80 mil­lion loan to boost the ef­fi­cien­cy, qual­i­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and re­silience of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s drink­ing wa­ter sup­ply and wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty.

That ini­tial US$80 mil­lion loan—which up to Oc­to­ber 2024 had on­ly been drawn down by 20 per cent—is part of a US$315 mil­lion con­di­tion­al cred­it line for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Wa­ter Sec­tor Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­gramme.

A sig­nif­i­cant as­pect of the US$80 mil­lion ini­tial loan in­clud­ed the in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing to help the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and its ex­e­cut­ing agency, WASA, to im­prove their gov­er­nance and sus­tain­able man­age­ment of wa­ter re­sources.

That ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, at both WASA and the min­istry, has gone a long way in ad­dress­ing some of the ills of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

One of the things that is dif­fer­ent about WASA now, the min­is­ter said, is that the chain of ac­count­abil­i­ty has been im­proved.

“There is a board that is hold­ing the man­age­ment to ac­count at var­i­ous lev­els; you have the min­istry and the min­is­ter that is hold­ing the board to ac­count to meet its var­i­ous tar­gets; and you al­so have man­agers who are now pre­pared to work with each oth­er, or in teams, to make sure that they de­liv­er.”

Gon­za­les said when he took over as the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties in 2020, WASA’s im­ple­men­ta­tion of projects un­der the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (the cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture of cen­tral gov­ern­ment) was 20 per cent. That im­ple­men­ta­tion rate has in­creased to 85 per cent.

“In the four-year pe­ri­od from Au­gust 2020, WASA has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed 194 projects,” said the min­is­ter.

One of the things of which Gon­za­les is par­tic­u­lar­ly proud is that since the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR) in April 2023, WASA has is­sued over 50 con­tracts, on­ly one of which had to be re­viewed by the OPR. That re­view was dis­pensed with af­ter two days, he said.

“Com­pared to how it was be­fore, where there were many al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion with WASA, we have re­al­ly done an ex­cel­lent job in im­prov­ing the stan­dard of our pro­cure­ment process­es.

“We com­ply with all of the re­quire­ments of the OPR and we make quar­ter­ly sub­mis­sions to it, so that they can re­view what is tak­ing place,” Gon­za­les said.

On a quar­ter­ly ba­sis, the OPR con­ducts re­views of the con­tracts is­sued by WASA. For the April 1 to June 30, 2024, the OPR found that WASA was "ful­ly com­pli­ant" with the in­struc­tions is­sued un­der sec­tion 14(1)(c) of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Act, 2017, which out­lines the pow­ers of the OPR.

The sub­mis­sion by WASA:

• Met the statu­to­ry re­port­ing dead­line—Ju­ly 22, 2024;

• Ad­hered to the for­mat and struc­tre of the con­tract re­port­ing tem­plate, with­out al­ter­ation;

• Ful­ly com­plied with the OPR’s in­struc­tions re­lat­ing to the pre­sen­ta­tion of val­ues; and

• Con­tained com­plet­ed manda­to­ry fields and/or com­mu­ni­cat­ed rea­sons for un­com­plet­ed manda­to­ry fields.

On the is­sue of statu­to­ry re­port­ing, Gon­za­les said WASA has ad­vanced its re­port­ing of its an­nu­al au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials. That fol­lows the im­po­si­tion by the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) of a fine of $2.9 mil­lion on the util­i­ty in De­cem­ber 2022 for fil­ing its an­nu­al re­ports for the fi­nan­cial years end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, past the re­spec­tive due dates.

The Com­mis­sion al­so found that WASA failed to file its an­nu­al re­ports for 2019, 2020 and 2021 by June 30, 2022.

Gon­za­les said WASA has com­plet­ed its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials up to 2022 and ex­pects to com­plete the 2023 ex­er­cise by Feb­ru­ary next year.

WASA has al­so im­proved its de­liv­ery of wa­ter to the pop­u­la­tion

He said 31 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion re­ceived a 24/7 wa­ter in 2020. By the end of Oc­to­ber, 2024, that per­cent­age had in­creased to 61 per cent as a re­sult of the util­i­ty’s fo­cus on drilling wells, re­fur­bish­ing wa­ter treat­ment plants and tar­get­ing un­served and un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties.

“By the end of De­cem­ber this year, we ex­pect that the per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion re­ceiv­ing a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply would move from 61 per cent to 70 per cent,” said Gon­za­les, adding that by the end of fis­cal 2025, the per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion re­ceiv­ing a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply would be 85 per cent. (Read more of this in­ter­view in this Thurs­day's Busi­ness Guardian)