GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said by the next gen­er­al elec­tion, 85 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion will be get­ting a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply. 

He made the an­nounce­ment at the com­mis­sion­ing of the Saut D’eau Wa­ter Treat­ment Fa­cil­i­ty in Mar­aval yes­ter­day.

Gon­za­les said dur­ing his tenure as min­is­ter WASA had com­mis­sioned 194 projects which have moved the lev­el of ser­vice from 31 per cent to 61 per cent. He ex­pects that lev­el of ser­vice to in­crease by the end of the year.

“By the next elec­tion, I don’t know when it’s be­ing called but I am pret­ty cer­tain, that by the next elec­tion, based on the amount of work we are ex­e­cut­ing all over Trinidad and To­ba­go, for the very first time in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go, over 85 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion will now have ac­cess to 24\7 lev­el of ser­vice,” he said.

“Now you might ask your­self what is go­ing on with the next 15 or the next 20 per cent. They will get wa­ter three days a week, two days a week, or four days a week.”

Gon­za­les ded­i­cat­ed the project to the res­i­dents of Mar­aval and Paramin, not­ing that work on the project had been done over 18 months.

He said WASA is of­ten crit­i­cised for not pro­vid­ing a re­li­able sup­ply of wa­ter but that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the case.

“How many of us take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that we may have con­struct­ed our homes out­side of the wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion grid and that it would re­quire the con­struc­tion of ad­di­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture to get the wa­ter sup­ply?” he asked.

“The gov­ern­ment is spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to pro­duce the wa­ter, mil­lions of dol­lars in pumps, mil­lions of dol­lars on in­fra­struc­ture. We as cit­i­zens have our part to play and if we can all play our part then we can cer­tain­ly have an im­prove­ment in the sup­ply of wa­ter be­cause there is a di­rect cor­re­la­tion.”

Not­ing that mil­lions went in­to the new Saut D’eau Wa­ter Treat­ment Fa­cil­i­ty, said it would take mil­lions more an­nu­al­ly to main­tain the plant.

“Can we con­tin­ue to main­tain it by de­pend­ing on the Min­istry of Fi­nance which may not be get­ting the nec­es­sary rev­enue from oil and gas to main­tain these fa­cil­i­ties? And what about WASA, col­lect­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate rates from its cus­tomers who might and should be will­ing to pay for the col­lec­tion of rates so the util­i­ty?

“Even if they don’t get the mon­ey from the Min­istry of Fi­nance at least the util­i­ty com­pa­ny would be able to main­tain those pumps,” Gon­za­les said.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said “wa­ter or the lack of wa­ter” was the num­ber one prob­lem he had to deal with as MP Diego Mar­tin North/East for the past 33 years.

“The rea­son is this con­stituen­cy is very dif­fi­cult. It’s very hilly, so you have the whole of Paramin and when you look at the wa­ter sup­ply in­fra­struc­ture in this con­stituen­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Mar­aval/Paramin area, this is the prod­uct of work done by suc­ces­sive PNM ad­min­is­tra­tions,” he said.

“The UNC did a lit­tle bit too . . . just to get the wa­ter to the top of Paramin was burst­ing the pipes.”

Im­bert praised the ef­forts of the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter in en­sur­ing the area had a bet­ter wa­ter sup­ply.

“The whole top of Paramin is now get­ting wa­ter that they nev­er dreamt in their lives that they would ever get,” he said.

“To solve the wa­ter prob­lems in my con­stituen­cy is a mir­a­cle.”