Chester Sam­bra­no

The gov­ern­ment has planned to re­duce its year­ly al­lo­ca­tion to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) by al­most $600 mil­lion.

The de­cline comes at a time when there is a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee set up to re­view the op­er­a­tions of the Au­thor­i­ty to make crit­i­cal changes amid un­prof­itabil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the Draft Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue and Ex­pen­di­ture of Statu­to­ry Board and Sim­i­lar Bod­ies and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) 2021 doc­u­ment WASA is to re­ceive $1 bil­lion in this fis­cal year as op­posed to the $1.6 bil­lion it re­quest­ed. This rep­re­sents a de­crease of $595,082,500.

In 2019 WASA was giv­en fund­ing to the tune of $1.7 bil­lion.

The doc­u­ment shows oth­er in­come be­ing gen­er­at­ed, among them, from me­tered sup­plies, un­metered sup­plies, Pt Lisas ac­counts and roy­al­ties, and in the end the to­tal in­come pro­ject­ed amounts to $2.48 bil­lion, a de­cline of $286 mil­lion in rev­enue com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, there are to be sev­er­al de­creas­es in ex­pen­di­ture at WASA as well. Un­der the line item Salaries and Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) there is a de­crease of $174 mil­lion and Wages and CO­LA al­so see a drop of $112 mil­lion.

Goods and Ser­vices is an­oth­er area where pro­ject­ed ex­pen­di­ture is de­clin­ing from $1.4 bil­lion to just over $1 bil­lion.

Guardian Me­dia sought clar­i­ty from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les on the sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in state sup­port for WASA.

"As the Fi­nance Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed, giv­en the dras­tic fall in the coun­try's rev­enue and the im­pact of COVID on T&T and the world econ­o­my, the Govt does not have the fi­nan­cial re­sources to pump $2 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly in­to WASA," he said.

The Min­is­ter added that, there­fore, WASA's board and man­age­ment are re­quired to "man­age the util­i­ty in a man­ner that ac­cords with fis­cal pru­dence and fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in light of the new re­al­i­ties."

Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales.

He added that, "we will iden­ti­fy those ar­eas of wastage and move swift­ly to­wards reengi­neer­ing and re­struc­tur­ing the util­i­ty to en­sure val­ue for mon­ey for the cit­i­zens as well as sound cor­po­rate gov­er­nance."

In re­cent times WASA has been un­der in­creased scruti­ny and there were con­cerns of mass re­trench­ment.

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke has since ad­vised the gov­ern­ment to in­crease wa­ter rates and keep all the jobs.

He has al­so sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to fight any plan to re­move staff at the au­thor­i­ty.

A Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee set up by the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to ad­dress the lin­ger­ing wa­ter woes, was giv­en three months to come up with a com­pre­hen­sive plan to im­prove the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply to cit­i­zens.

Among the ar­eas the com­mit­tee will ex­am­ine will be WASA’s op­er­a­tions, mount­ing debt, age­ing pipelines, gov­er­nance struc­ture and poor wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Chair­ing the com­mit­tee is Min­is­ter Gon­za­les, who will work along­side mem­bers— Hous­ing Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan and So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Don­na Cox.

The com­mit­tee has to sub­mit rec­om­men­da­tions and a frame­work for the re­struc­tur­ing of the wa­ter com­pa­ny to Row­ley by No­vem­ber 30.

As he de­liv­ered the bud­get on Mon­day Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said while the re­port has not yet been re­ceived, the gov­ern­ment is look­ing at in­creas­ing the wa­ter tar­iffs in this coun­try.

The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry un­der which WASA falls will be al­lo­cat­ed $2.091 bil­lion com­pared to $3 bil­lion in the last fis­cal year.

The over­all 2020/2021 bud­get is $49.5 bil­lion.