Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said wa­ter sup­ply is be­ing re­stored to com­mu­ni­ties in north, cen­tral and south Trinidad fol­low­ing dis­rup­tions caused by prob­lems at the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant.

The min­is­ter, who spoke with re­porters at the re-launch of the T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPost) Diego Mar­tin De­liv­ery Of­fice yes­ter­day, apol­o­gised to cus­tomers of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) who were af­fect­ed by the dis­rup­tions. He al­so ex­plained why there was a de­lay in restor­ing the wa­ter sup­ply and said there would be “nor­mal­iza­tion of the pres­sures and sched­ules in the im­pact­ed ar­eas” by to­day.

“The Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant pro­duces 75 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter on a dai­ly ba­sis and you can just imag­ine, once you have a dis­rup­tion of that mag­ni­tude, it’s 75 mil­lion gal­lons less on a dai­ly ba­sis. So, it takes about 48 to 72 hours to ful­ly re­cov­er from that so I want to apol­o­gise on be­half of the au­thor­i­ty for that dis­rup­tion,” he said.

Gon­za­les ex­plained: “The plant suf­fered a ma­jor dis­rup­tion, an elec­tri­cal dis­rup­tion at the raw wa­ter in­take. A main trans­former went out of op­er­a­tion and it took the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48 hours to re­place that trans­former and to deal with the oth­er elec­tri­cal is­sues.

“That was com­plet­ed on Sun­day morn­ing, around 6 am, but be­cause the af­fect­ed ar­eas in north, cen­tral, and south Trinidad were out of wa­ter for 48 hours, it nor­mal­ly takes about 48 hours for pres­sures to build, es­pe­cial­ly in com­mu­ni­ties in the ex­trem­i­ties that are be­ing im­pact­ed. So, nor­mal­ly you would see in the WASA re­leas­es that while yes, the plant has re­turned to full op­er­a­tion, some com­mu­ni­ties will ex­pe­ri­ence low pres­sures, etc, be­cause it takes about 48 hours.

“So, we were with­in that 48-hour pe­ri­od up to yes­ter­day, and that’s the rea­son why you had a lot of com­mu­ni­ties suf­fer­ing, a lot of com­plain­ing of low pres­sures and in many in­stances, low wa­ter.”

Gon­za­les rub­bished re­ports of an ex­plo­sion at the plant.

“It is an elec­tri­cal trans­former, it went out of op­er­a­tion, that was the elec­tri­cal is­sue and it re­quired the Au­thor­i­ty to re­place the trans­former in or­der to re­store the plant to full op­er­a­tion. That is the undis­put­ed fact. So, if there is any­thing on so­cial me­dia that sug­gests oth­er­wise, it is sim­ply not true,” he said.

The min­is­ter al­so com­ment­ed on how crime is ham­per­ing op­er­a­tions at WASA, TTPost and T&TEC and oth­er pub­lic util­i­ties. He said there are plans to col­lab­o­rate with the po­lice to come up with a so­lu­tion.

“Not too far away in Care­nage we are chal­lenged to pro­vide a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply be­cause some of the op­er­a­tors in the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty are afraid to ven­ture in­to some of these com­mu­ni­ties to turn on the boost­er sta­tions or to turn on the valves be­cause of the es­ca­lat­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ties that we have there.

“But these are chal­lenges that are faced on a dai­ly ba­sis . . . we con­tin­ue to part­ner with the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice, and the po­lice in the neigh­bour­ing ar­eas. Just this morn­ing I spoke to the chair­man of WASA and I told him that we’re go­ing to have a con­ver­sa­tion with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion to part­ner so that the util­i­ty providers can go out in­to the com­mu­ni­ties to pro­vide the nec­es­sary ser­vices,” he said

In his ad­dress at the rib­bon cut­ting and re-launch cer­e­mo­ny, Gon­za­les said the re­fur­bish­ment of the Diego Mar­tin TTPost of­fice cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.7 mil­lion and will as­sist around 15,000 mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty.

He said he has al­ready asked the Fi­nance Min­istry for an al­lo­ca­tion of $5 to $10 mil­lion in the next fis­cal year for a Lega­cy Build­ing Restora­tion Pro­gramme.

The project, a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry and TTPost, aims to re­store his­toric build­ings owned by the cor­po­ra­tion and re­sume their postal func­tions. Gon­za­les said they are tar­get­ing 13 fa­cil­i­ties across the coun­try in ar­eas such as Tacarigua, Curepe, St Joseph, Ma­yaro, and San­gre Grande. He said the pro­gramme will help TTPost save mil­lions of dol­lars.

TTPost chair­man Michael Seales, said there are plans to fo­cus on the in­ter­na­tion­al couri­er busi­ness, which will di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my. This is based on Cari­com re­search which sug­gests that this type of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion can in­crease a coun­try’s GDP by two to four per cent.

Seales said in­tro­duc­tion of the Lega­cy Pro­gramme will as­sist in that plan.