Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has rub­bished claims by Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) may be fail­ing to ad­e­quate­ly treat the coun­try’s wa­ter be­cause of an in­abil­i­ty to pay sup­pli­ers of treat­ment chem­i­cals.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Padarath said he had re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion from WASA that there had been no dis­rup­tion in the sup­ply of chem­i­cals used to treat wa­ter across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I was able to con­firm with WASA, a short while ago, that at no point in time there was dis­rup­tion in the ser­vice sup­ply­ing de­liv­ery of chem­i­cals to WASA for the treat­ment of wa­ter across Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Padarath said.

He dis­missed Gon­za­les’ as­ser­tions as a “ma­li­cious lie”, in­sist­ing that wa­ter treat­ment op­er­a­tions were con­tin­u­ing de­spite re­ports of dis­coloured wa­ter af­fect­ing cus­tomers in sev­er­al ar­eas.

“The wa­ter con­tin­ues to be treat­ed; the pipes that are af­fect­ed are con­tin­u­ing to be flushed,” the min­is­ter said, adding that there had been “some sig­nif­i­cant progress in some of the ar­eas” as ef­forts to re­solve the prob­lem con­tin­ued.

On Fri­day, Gon­za­les ques­tioned whether WASA’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion was af­fect­ing its abil­i­ty to se­cure the chem­i­cals need­ed to ad­e­quate­ly treat the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply.

In a Face­book post, the Op­po­si­tion MP said: “This scan­dal ex­pos­es the ‘ele­phant in the room’. Is this be­ing caused by WASA’s in­abil­i­ty to pay sup­pli­ers of wa­ter treat­ment chem­i­cals to ad­e­quate­ly treat the coun­try’s wa­ter and those chem­i­cals are not be­ing pro­vid­ed to WASA on a time­ly ba­sis due to non-pay­ment?”

Gon­za­les al­so called for com­pen­sa­tion for cus­tomers who have re­port­ed­ly en­dured days of dis­coloured wa­ter and claimed dam­age to their cloth­ing and wash­ing ap­pli­ances.

WASA, in a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Thurs­day, said it was tak­ing im­me­di­ate and sus­tained ac­tion to ad­dress re­ports of dis­coloured wa­ter af­fect­ing cus­tomers in some ar­eas.

Mean­while, with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo sched­uled to present the 2027 na­tion­al bud­get in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Padarath said he hoped the al­lo­ca­tions would al­low the min­istry to ac­cel­er­ate plans for three de­sali­na­tion plants, two in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go.

Padarath said fund­ing had been iden­ti­fied, project scopes com­plet­ed and re­quests for pro­pos­als pre­pared, with con­struc­tion ex­pect­ed to be­gin dur­ing the first half of 2027.

“We are look­ing at the first half of 2027 to break ground and start con­struc­tion,” the min­is­ter said.