Carisa Lee

By the end of the month, Gov­ern­ment’s plans to trans­form the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) will be re­vealed.

This was an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les af­ter the launch of the North West Wa­ter Sup­ply Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme (NWWSIP) at Gov­ern­ment Plaza in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Back in March, dur­ing a ‘Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter’ event in Bon Air West, Gon­za­les said the trans­for­ma­tion plan was pre­pared.

It was led by a sub­com­mit­tee head­ed by Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les.

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) filed an in­junc­tion to stop the re­struc­tur­ing at the In­dus­tri­al Court but WASA was giv­en the green light to con­tin­ue.

Last month, Gon­za­les said the fi­nal step of the plan was to meet with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“I’m sure by the end of June, the coun­try will be very clear in the di­rec­tion in which the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing for the trans­for­ma­tion of the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty,” Gon­za­les said.

The min­is­ter said WASA has a man­age­ment is­sue and to fix the com­pa­ny they have to start there.

But as the au­thor­i­ty works on fix­ing the in­ter­nal prob­lems, it is al­so work­ing on ex­ter­nal ones. It’s what the launch of NWWSIP is set to do for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 143,000 cus­tomers in north west Trinidad.

“You need­ed a project and you need­ed a plan that dealt with your in­fra­struc­ture is­sues, that dealt with your lack of au­toma­tion is­sues, as well as deal­ing with the wa­ter deficit is­sue,” Gon­za­les said.

He said NWWSIP will ad­dress the is­sues from a mul­ti­fac­eted per­spec­tive for cus­tomers in Mar­aval/Paramin, Diego Mar­tin, San Juan/Laven­tille, Cas­cade/St Ann’s and San­ta Cruz.

The min­is­ter said in the north west re­gion, over $200 mil­lion is owed to WASA by cus­tomers and if they get 50 per cent of the mon­ey owed, they can do dou­ble these projects to im­prove lev­els of ser­vice.

“The ob­jec­tive of these plans is to en­sure that no com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceives a wa­ter sup­ply of be­low 24/3. We have too many com­mu­ni­ties get­ting a lev­el of ser­vice once every nine days, I mean re­al­ly,” he said.

Head of wa­ter projects at WASA, Shawn Sandy, said the pro­gramme has 53 projects that will take ap­prox­i­mate­ly a year and a half to be com­plet­ed.

“Based on the va­ri­ety of projects be­ing im­ple­ment­ed, we will start see­ing project com­ple­tion from as ear­ly as six months and the pro­gramme will be 80 per cent com­plet­ed with­in 12 months,” Sa­landy said.

It’s work Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment of Diego Mar­tin North East Colm Im­bert is grate­ful for. The MP said in his over 30 years of ser­vice to the con­stituen­cy, res­i­dents’ biggest prob­lem has been wa­ter sup­ply.

“Peo­ple will call me at 11 pm on a Sun­day night to tell me that they haven’t had wa­ter for the last three weeks, so my re­sponse will be what on earth I can do at 11 o’clock on a Sun­day night. I al­so asked them what they have done for the last three weeks be­cause you told me you haven’t had wa­ter for three weeks, they say they have been talk­ing to WASA,” he said.

Im­bert said this has been the re­al­i­ty in his con­stituen­cy for the last 30 years and he was hap­py that a Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties has fi­nal­ly recog­nised that it’s time to pay at­ten­tion to the wa­ter sup­ply in­fra­struc­ture in north west Trinidad.

“I to­tal­ly sup­port this project, I en­dorse it and I will en­sure as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance that what­ev­er fund­ing is re­quired will be pro­vid­ed for this project,” he said.

Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said in the com­ing months he plans to roll out the North East Plan, the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Wa­ter Im­prove­ment Plan and the Cen­tral and South Re­gion­al Wa­ter Im­prove­ment Plan.

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