Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

More de­sali­na­tion plants and wells are need­ed to ser­vice re­mote com­mu­ni­ties, says Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath.

He made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing the start of the T&T Or­chid So­ci­ety’s an­nu­al two-day Moth­er’s Day show and sale at Preysal High School on Sat­ur­day.

Padarath crit­i­cised the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) for its long-stand­ing fail­ure to mon­i­tor wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sched­ules, not­ing that while timeta­bles were of­ten re­leased, cit­i­zens reg­u­lar­ly re­port­ed that wa­ter failed to ar­rive as promised.

“I have been com­plain­ing about that for a num­ber of years,” he said.

“My col­leagues and I kept hear­ing the same sto­ry: there’s a sched­ule, but no wa­ter in the taps.”

Since as­sum­ing of­fice, Padarath said he has spent three of his first five days at WASA, work­ing to sta­bilise sup­ply is­sues. He ac­cused the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion of lack­ing the po­lit­i­cal will to re­solve the wa­ter cri­sis.

“There is a deficit in sup­ply and a deficit in dis­tri­b­u­tion,” he ex­plained.

“The ma­jor is­sue is dis­tri­b­u­tion. It can­not be that one part of the coun­try re­ceives a 24-hour sup­ply while oth­ers get wa­ter once a month.”

He iden­ti­fied com­mu­ni­ties such as Fyz­abad, Siparia, Oropouche West and East, Princes Town, Moru­ga, Ma­yaro, and parts of Cen­tral and East Trinidad as among the hard­est hit.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, mi­nor projects have al­ready be­gun in sev­er­al ar­eas to bring re­lief, with broad­er ef­forts un­der­way across the coun­try, in­clud­ing in his Cou­va South con­stituen­cy.

Padarath at­trib­uted many of Cen­tral Trinidad’s wa­ter chal­lenges to de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture. He al­so al­leged that mil­lions of dol­lars in con­tracts were award­ed by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der the guise of emer­gency projects.

“It was used for elec­tion­eer­ing,” he claimed, vow­ing to re­veal more de­tails dur­ing the up­com­ing mid-year bud­get re­view.

“I want to tell Mar­vin Gon­za­les and oth­ers who presided over WASA that we are go­ing to bring the truth to the peo­ple of T&T,” Padarath said.

“They suf­fered peo­ple for wa­ter while friends and fam­i­ly fed at the trough at WASA.”

He fur­ther as­sured that the UNC would not yield to Op­po­si­tion pres­sure.

“This is not go­ing to be like 2010–2015 when they [re­fer­ring to the PNM] rode roughshod over this coun­try. We are not danc­ing to the tune of the PNM at all,” he de­clared.

Speak­ing about the con­di­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St Ann’s, he said the mat­ter is now in the hands of Natasha Bar­row, the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, who is al­so the head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

Padarath said he spoke with Bar­row to pro­vide al­ter­nate ac­com­mo­da­tion for the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at.