Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says To­ba­go’s wa­ter woes will re­main a po­lit­i­cal bat­tle­ground un­til the is­land gains con­trol over pub­lic util­i­ties.

His com­ments fol­low a clash be­tween Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Faith Breb­nor and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters over the state of the is­land’s wa­ter sup­ply dur­ing the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for a Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) wa­ter treat­ment plant on Wednes­day.

Breb­nor was crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment, claim­ing that To­ba­go still strug­gles with wa­ter is­sues de­spite on­go­ing projects and that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is ex­clud­ed from key min­istry events.

In re­sponse, Min­is­ters Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, and Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son ac­cused her of ig­nor­ing Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment ef­forts to im­prove the wa­ter sup­ply.

Au­gus­tine took a more mea­sured, mel­low stance yes­ter­day, but main­tained that the THA is side­lined from key de­ci­sions while still be­ing held ac­count­able for wa­ter short­ages. He ar­gued that with­out a say in WASA’s poli­cies and spend­ing, the THA can­not ful­ly ad­dress To­ba­go’s needs and this makes au­ton­o­my a crit­i­cal is­sue.

“When you have a THA Act that lists pub­lic util­i­ties as a fifth-sched­ule item, and then you have a state agency (WASA) that does not re­port to you at all to do the de­liv­ery of said pub­lic util­i­ty, and then you are on is­land and you just see by the way that they open a well or open some new project and you are not con­sult­ed in the room.

“You are not able to ex­press what the peo­ple you rep­re­sent want, and let that help to im­pact the poli­cies that WASA ac­tu­al­ly is mak­ing, then the pol­i­tics, of course, be­comes a chal­lenge in that re­gard,” he said.

“All of this boils down to the ques­tion of To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my and what we re­al­ly should be in charge of as an is­land, and en­sur­ing that it’s abun­dant­ly clear who is in charge of what.”

De­spite these lim­i­ta­tions, Au­gus­tine said the THA act­ed quick­ly to sup­port wa­ter projects. He said parts of sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties are still with­out a prop­er con­nec­tion. He pre­ferred not to rate WASA’s ef­forts.

“I think you pose those ques­tions to the res­i­dents of To­ba­go be­cause when you do they will be hon­est about what they get and don’t get. There are com­mu­ni­ties that are well-served and nev­er with­out. Then you go to Bloody Bay and get com­plaints,” Au­gus­tine said

He said com­mu­ni­ties like Char­lot­teville and Cas­tara still strug­gle with un­re­li­able ac­cess, forc­ing some res­i­dents to cre­ate in­for­mal wa­ter col­lec­tion sys­tems.

To find long-term so­lu­tions, Au­gus­tine sug­gest­ed that WASA con­sid­er de­sali­na­tion. He said WASA and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment will get sup­port and re­sources from To­ba­go to sup­port this ini­tia­tive.