Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les is de­scrib­ing the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty’s (WASA) wa­ter truck­ing ser­vice “as or­gan­ised crime, cor­rup­tion and chaos” vow­ing to root out all lev­els of un­scrupu­lous and il­le­gal mis­con­duct with­in the au­thor­i­ty.

Gon­za­les was re­spond­ing to the 135-page re­port of the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to re­view the op­er­a­tions of WASA which iden­ti­fied its wa­ter truck­ing ser­vice to be “cor­rup­tion-laced.”

On Fri­day, the re­port will be laid in Par­lia­ment.

Gon­za­les, who chaired the com­mit­tee ad­mit­ted there was some ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing in the ser­vice.

The re­port found there was “cor­rup­tion among WASA truck dri­vers and/or ex­ter­nal truck con­trac­tors where unau­tho­rised on-site pay­ments are so­licit­ed and re­ceipts are gen­er­at­ed for non-ex­is­tent jobs. Wa­ter trucks al­so il­le­gal­ly fill at fire hy­drants rather than WASA ap­proved fill­ing sta­tions and il­le­gal­ly sell to WASA’s cus­tomers.”

It al­so re­vealed that the ser­vice was in­ef­fi­cient­ly man­aged and as a con­se­quence, its op­er­a­tion was fraught with many prob­lems, in­clud­ing over­sized wa­ter tankers that were un­able to nav­i­gate nar­row streets and steep hills.

This sit­u­a­tion has ren­dered the ser­vice, the re­port stat­ed, “un­cer­tain and un­re­li­able and has spawned the de­vel­op­ment of a thriv­ing, par­al­lel and il­le­gal wa­ter truck­ing ser­vice, where hap­less, des­per­ate cus­tomers and will­ing to pay up to $400 for truck-borne wa­ter sup­ply.”

“So they are get­ting wa­ter il­le­gal­ly and sell­ing it to cit­i­zens. Some cit­i­zens are pay­ing up to $1,500 for a tank of wa­ter. And a lot of them are le­git­i­mate WASA cus­tomers who ought not to be pay­ing for wa­ter.”

When there is a dis­rup­tion in sup­ply or un­avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter in a com­mu­ni­ty, WASA will pro­vide a truck borne sup­ply util­is­ing a fleet of 35 trucks.

Of this to­tal, 31 wa­ter trucks are con­tract­ed from ex­ter­nal providers who source wa­ter from 20 fill­ing sta­tions across the coun­try.

Do­mes­tic cus­tomers with up­dat­ed ac­counts can qual­i­fy for WASA’s wa­ter truck­ing ser­vice of 400 gal­lons no more than twice per week.

For non-do­mes­tic cus­tomers, there is an ap­proval process by WASA’s se­nior man­ag­er of op­er­a­tions.

On­ly me­tered cus­tomers are re­quired to pay for the wa­ter truck­ing ser­vice, while wa­ter truck­ers, both con­tract­ed and in­ter­nal are not au­tho­rised to col­lect pay­ment.

The re­port cit­ed that WASA needs 78 trucks to suc­cess­ful­ly ser­vice its client rather than its cur­rent fleet.

Gon­za­les drew ref­er­ence to res­i­dents of La­dy Chan­cel­lor, Port-of-Spain, who had not been re­ceiv­ing wa­ter for months due to a myr­i­ad of prob­lems.

“Many of these res­i­dents are bonafide WASA cus­tomers and had to pay for a truck sup­ply.”

Gon­za­les said as com­mu­ni­ties ex­pand­ed across the coun­try, WASA had not been bring­ing new wa­ter in­to its grid.

“So, there­fore, it cre­ates an im­bal­ance with de­mand and sup­ply. That im­bal­ance has cre­at­ed an av­enue for il­le­gal prac­tices and dri­ven WASA to de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter which is now un­sus­tain­able.”

He ad­mit­ted that most of WASA’s plants, pumps and ma­chin­ery were op­er­at­ing at 50 per cent.

“Not be­cause there is no wa­ter but be­cause of dis­re­pair. Some of the pumps are not work­ing you have to sched­ule the wa­ter and move it around which cre­ates fur­ther pres­sure on peo­ple to pur­chase wa­ter il­le­gal­ly by this wa­ter truck­ing in­dus­try.”

Gon­za­les said WASA has to re­duce its de­pen­den­cy on its truck-borne ser­vice and pro­vide the na­tion with a re­li­able pipe-borne sup­ply.

Ques­tioned if WASA was able to take dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against any of the truck dri­vers, Gon­za­les said, “not that I know of. I have ac­cess to au­dits re­ports that point to ar­eas of con­cern that I am look­ing in­to. And I would re­fer the re­ports to the au­thor­i­ties for ac­tion to be tak­en.”