SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has dis­missed al­le­ga­tions that Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) work­ers have un­der­tak­en shod­dy work­man­ship in re­pair­ing the rup­tured 48-inch con­crete main at the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant that left 250,000 cus­tomers with dry taps for three days.

Gon­za­les al­so in­sist­ed yes­ter­day that he gave “no in­struc­tions” to WASA’s man­age­ment to turn on the wa­ter while the pipeline which had been re­paired with con­crete was still wet.

“This was no time to cast blame or en­gage in con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Let’s show our ca­pac­i­ty to man­age our cir­cum­stances with dig­ni­ty and deco­rum. With the help of God, we will get through this,” he said.

Re­spond­ing in a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia, Gon­za­les broke his si­lence on the burst pipeline which re­sult­ed in a 72-hour dis­rup­tion in wa­ter sup­ply to a quar­ter of a mil­lion cit­i­zens in north Trinidad.

“The re­pair cri­sis proved very dif­fi­cult for the work­ers and de­spite sev­er­al es­ti­mat­ed time­lines for com­ple­tion, the au­thor­i­ty was on­ly able to recom­mis­sion the line at around 10 am to­day (yes­ter­day).”

Ad­mit­ting that the sit­u­a­tion caused wide­spread in­con­ve­nience to many cit­i­zens, Gon­za­les said a team of 25 WASA work­ers laboured around the clock to have the line re­paired.

“I wish to com­mend the work­ers of the au­thor­i­ty who spent sleep­less nights dur­ing the re­pair process.”

‘New by­pass line to be con­struct­ed’

The min­is­ter al­so praised WASA’s Board for sup­port­ing the crew dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.

“I am ad­vised that it will take over 48 hours for the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem to be­come ful­ly charged for the nec­es­sary pres­sures to build for all af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties to get their sup­ply of wa­ter. I ap­peal to the good con­science and pa­tience of our cit­i­zens as we nav­i­gate through this dif­fi­cul­ty,” Gon­za­les said.

Ad­mit­ting that “crises do hap­pen from time to time”, Gon­za­les urged cus­tomers to ig­nore “sev­er­al con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” placed in the pub­lic do­main to fur­ther ex­ac­er­bate the un­ease of cit­i­zens.

“All I ask cit­i­zens to do is to please ig­nore. These un­in­formed com­ments are un­help­ful and un­pro­duc­tive.”

There were ru­mours that WASA em­ploy­ees had done sub­stan­dard work in fix­ing the line, Gon­za­les said, “and I gave in­struc­tions to turn on the wa­ter when the con­crete was not dry”.

Gon­za­les said the pipeline which rup­tured was con­struct­ed in the 1970s. “It’s old con­crete pipes that the au­thor­i­ty no longer us­es.”

In the in­ter­im, Gon­za­les said, a tem­po­rary re­pair was done “pend­ing the con­struc­tion of a new by­pass line over the next three days by WASA em­ploy­ees”.

Gon­za­les said WASA was still tab­u­lat­ing the over­all cost of the re­pairs.