Jesse Ramdeo

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has sought to set the record straight over what he de­scribed as the lies ped­dled by the Op­po­si­tion re­gard­ing the re­struc­tur­ing of WASA.

On Sun­day, op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal claimed gov­ern­ment en­tered in­to a se­cret agree­ment with a for­eign com­pa­ny to trans­form WASA and that man­agers were be­ing trained to re­place those that are ex­pect­ed to be axed.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Gon­za­les cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied the claims.

“They are un­found­ed, the are reck­less, they are evil, they are ma­li­cious and they are in­tend­ed to stop the gov­ern­ment from en­gag­ing in a very im­por­tant na­tion­al ex­er­cise for all cit­i­zens.”

Gon­za­les said the al­le­ga­tion that man­agers were be­ing trained was mis­lead­ing.

He said, “It was on­ly last night in a meet­ing that I had with some mem­bers of the Board and se­nior man­agers of WASA I learnt that the OJT ( On- the- Job Train­ing) pro­gramme as­signed 50 OJT trainees to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty as they have done with oth­er State agen­cies and min­istries and 50 OJT trainees joined WASA re­cent­ly to un­der­take and un­der­go a train­ing pro­gramme to set about their ca­reer and de­vel­op them­selves.”

Gon­za­les al­so said not on­ly were the state­ments by Dr Mooni­lal mis­lead­ing, but he went a step fur­ther, ref­er­enc­ing a loan agree­ment dur­ing the Peo­ples Part­ner­ship’s tenure, be­tween 2012 and 2013, be­tween for­mer WASA CEO Gan­ga Singh and the In­ter Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank aimed at re­struc­tur­ing WASA.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, the terms and con­di­tions of the near­ly 400 mil­lion dol­lar loan for the ex­er­cise was nev­er ho­n­oured.

“ The UNC gov­ern­ment re­ceived a loan from the IADB to the tune of 396 mil­lion dol­lars so as to com­mence the re­struc­tur­ing of WASA and by 2015 as op­posed to hav­ing a staff lev­el of 2400 em­ploy­ees their staffing lev­el in­creased to 5000 em­ploy­ees.”

Gon­za­les be­lieved that by breach­ing the con­di­tions of the loan, the coun­try was placed in a dis­ad­van­tages po­si­tion.

He said, “I am cer­tain it dam­aged the rep­u­ta­tion of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and coun­try be­fore the eyes of in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions like IADB and CAF. I can tell you, I have had sev­er­al dis­cus­sions with IADB and CAF with re­spect to get­ting fi­nanc­ing to fund cer­tain cap­i­tal projects to im­prove wa­ter sup­ply and they are very cog­nizant of this re­al­i­ty.”

The min­is­ter al­so con­tend­ed that the leak back­log fig­ure out­lined by Dr Mooni­lal was in­flat­ed and as­sured that it will be re­duced to ze­ro by the end of Sep­tem­ber.