Ot­to Car­ring­ton

New­ly ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath says he will fo­cus on a strong, peo­ple-fo­cused agen­da to re­form and re­vi­talise the pub­lic util­i­ties sec­tor in T&T.

Flanked by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Clyde El­der and par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary Shiv­an­na Sam on his first day in of­fice yes­ter­day, Padarath out­lined a se­ries of im­me­di­ate and long-term pri­or­i­ties for the min­istry dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the min­istry Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters.

“We are here on our very first day get­ting ac­quaint­ed with the staff. The Prime Min­is­ter (Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar) has giv­en us a man­date to al­ways have an open-door pol­i­cy,” Padarath said.

“Our first ac­tion was to meet with staff and get an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the chal­lenges with­in the min­istry and its agen­cies.”

Chief among the chal­lenges is the long­stand­ing is­sue of wa­ter pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­fect­ing com­mu­ni­ties across sev­er­al con­stituen­cies, he said.

“It’s not just about wa­ter pro­duc­tion. The re­al­i­ty is that many mains through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go are over 50–60 years old. Dis­tri­b­u­tion is just as crit­i­cal.”

Padarath crit­i­cised pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions for fail­ing to act de­ci­sive­ly de­spite a US$200 mil­lion loan grant­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) near­ly four years ago.

“Very lit­tle has been done with that loan. It re­quires po­lit­i­cal will—some­thing we are bring­ing to the ta­ble,” he said.

He al­so promised ac­count­abil­i­ty at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), not­ing that sched­uled wa­ter de­liv­er­ies of­ten go un­met.

“As MPs, we are fre­quent­ly told that wa­ter is sched­uled for de­liv­ery, and yet, house­holds re­main dry. That has to change.”

To this end, Padarath re­vealed that his first of­fi­cial meet­ing to­day will be with WASA man­age­ment to de­ter­mine the cur­rent sta­tus and ini­ti­ate cor­rec­tive ac­tion.

While dis­pelling spec­u­la­tion about im­mi­nent rate hikes, Padarath reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed that this ad­min­is­tra­tion will not move to in­crease wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty rates at this time. Our fo­cus will be on ser­vice im­prove­ment,” he said.

Be­yond WASA, oth­er state agen­cies like T&TEC, TSTT, and TTPost are al­so un­der the mi­cro­scope.

Padarath ac­knowl­edged the se­ri­ous back­log of un­re­solved is­sues, such as TSTT’s two-year-old cy­ber-at­tack re­port, which he plans to bring to Par­lia­ment for trans­paren­cy.

Re­gard­ing T&TEC, Padarath not­ed a sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial cri­sis, ref­er­enc­ing “bil­lions owed to NGC,” and pledged to seek sus­tain­able so­lu­tions rather than al­low these crit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions to “con­tin­ue to be dri­ven in­to the ground.”

He al­so cred­it­ed his team. “Min­is­ter (Clyde) El­der brings valu­able ne­go­ti­a­tion and labour skills, while Sec­re­tary Sam’s ex­pe­ri­ence at the EMA strength­ens our abil­i­ty to in­te­grate en­vi­ron­men­tal in­sight, es­pe­cial­ly in ar­eas like me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices.”

As the new team be­gins its tenure, Padarath said their ap­proach will be con­sul­ta­tive and peo­ple-cen­tred.

“Our job is to lis­ten, act, and de­liv­er. That be­gins first thing to­mor­row,” Padarath de­clared.