Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties is promis­ing to in­struct the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to re­lease a re­port in the com­ing days that al­leged­ly re­veals ge­o­graph­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion in wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Bar­ry Padarath ref­er­enced a me­dia re­lease from WASA on Tues­day which claimed that in 2024, on­ly 19 per cent of its cus­tomers re­ceived a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply, while be­tween Jan­u­ary to April this year, it im­proved slight­ly to 27 per cent of cus­tomers.

Padarath said this da­ta di­rect­ly con­flict­ed with for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ as­ser­tion that it was close to 61 per cent with an un­in­ter­rupt­ed sup­ply.

“Mar­vin Gon­za­les needs to ex­plain to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go why he lied to them. Be­cause the for­mer min­is­ter would have had the same da­ta that WASA is putting in the pub­lic do­main. And this is an in­de­pen­dent re­port that was put out with­out my knowl­edge in­to the pub­lic space,” Padarath said.

He added, “So, the for­mer min­is­ter has a lot more ques­tions to an­swer and if it is any­one who should be re­ceiv­ing any blows, it should be Mar­vin Gon­za­les for ly­ing to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go on an im­por­tant is­sue of wa­ter. Wa­ter im­pacts peo­ple every sin­gle day of their lives.”

Min­is­ter Padarath said he would ask the State en­ti­ty to pro­duce a full re­port show­ing how wa­ter was dis­trib­uted dur­ing the PNM’s term in of­fice as he be­lieves it will re­in­force the UNC’s pri­or claims that there was ge­o­graph­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion in wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“Some parts of this coun­try re­ceive a 24/7 sup­ply con­tin­u­ous­ly and some parts don’t re­ceive wa­ter for weeks and months. You will see the ge­o­graph­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion that oc­curred un­der the PNM. Why is it that Pe­nal, Debe, Cu­mu­to, Man­zanil­la, To­co, Cou­va South and Cou­va North, along the cor­ri­dor, there are some ar­eas that still don’t re­ceive wa­ter? But there are oth­er parts of the coun­try, there are no chal­lenges,” Padarath posit­ed.

Padarath al­so promised to re­lease the now scrapped trans­for­ma­tion plan for WASA.

“I will share with the pub­lic a copy of the trans­for­ma­tion plan over the next few days, high­light­ing the ar­eas that the for­mer gov­ern­ment fo­cused on. And they fo­cused on the HR (hu­man re­sources) el­e­ment of the trans­for­ma­tion. They did not fo­cus on the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of WASA. How do you make it a prof­itable com­pa­ny? How do you make it a sus­tain­able com­pa­ny?”

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Gon­za­les called Padarath a “liar”. He claimed Padarath pres­sured the au­thor­i­ty to re­lease false in­for­ma­tion.

“I have re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from mul­ti­ple sources that the min­is­ter and his small team in­side of WASA bul­lied peo­ple to put this ly­ing state­ment out.

“Check out all where work was done over the last four years. The min­is­ter is a mis­chief mak­er and de­ceiv­er.”

Gon­za­les then shared via What­sApp sev­er­al news ar­ti­cles and me­dia re­leas­es from WASA in a bid to sup­port his point.

In a me­dia re­lease dat­ed Jan­u­ary 2025, WASA boast­ed of “Ground­break­ing wa­ter sup­ply im­prove­ment project for Wood­land and San Fran­cique ar­eas.”

He then shared a CNC3 News ar­ti­cle from No­vem­ber 17, 2023, where Freeport res­i­dents ex­pressed grat­i­tude for an im­proved wa­ter sup­ply.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter Padarath said he is still await­ing in­struc­tions on how Gov­ern­ment will pro­ceed with plans to dis­miss 34 ex­ec­u­tives who were brought on by Gon­za­les to over­see the now de­funct trans­for­ma­tion plan.

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing on May 15, Padarath said this will re­sult in sav­ings of around $30 mil­lion for the State. Asked for an up­date yes­ter­day, Padarath said, “You would have to go through a prop­er HR and IR (in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions) in­tro­spec­tion in terms of how these things are ad­dressed. I have not re­ceived that just as yet from WASA, so I am wait­ing to re­ceive that.”

He is ex­pect­ing that to come “with­in the week.”