Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has in­struct­ed Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les to meet with the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) and the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) on Mon­day to get their in­put in solv­ing the on­go­ing is­sues at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Gon­za­les has a six-week dead­line to re­port back to the Cab­i­net on the way for­ward.

Is­su­ing the in­struc­tion as he ad­dressed a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing at the San Juan Laven­tille Sec­ondary School on Sat­ur­day, Row­ley spoke of the bil­lion-dol­lar debt hang­ing over the Au­thor­i­ty’s head which he said, was a bur­den on tax­pay­ers.

De­clar­ing him­self not to be an­ti-labour, Row­ley said while labour had brought good and im­proved con­di­tions for work­ers world­wide, he in­sist­ed, “What I am against is dotish labour lead­ers who are lead­ing work­ers astray.”

Fo­cus­ing on the prob­lems at WASA, he in­struct­ed Gon­za­les who had been seat­ed in the front row of the school’s au­di­to­ri­um: “On Mon­day morn­ing, write NATUC and JTUM and in­vite them to sit down with you.

“You ex­plain to them what is hap­pen­ing at WASA (be­cause) all of us have to drink wa­ter, and get from them their in­put in­to solv­ing the WASA prob­lem.

Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales

Image courtesy Ministry of Public Utilities

“It is not suf­fi­cient to come on the news in the night and talk about who didn’t get wa­ter.”

Ad­dress­ing Pe­nal-Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my who is very vo­cal about the is­sues af­fect­ing his burgess­es who have not been re­ceiv­ing a steady wa­ter sup­ply and claims that it is due to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, the PM ad­vised him, “When you have noth­ing use­ful to say, just shut your mouth.”

Row­ley said just like Pe­nal res­i­dents, peo­ple liv­ing in ar­eas like Care­nage, Laven­tille and Di­a­mond Vale al­so faced chal­lenges in get­ting a pipe-borne sup­ply.

Say­ing he has had enough of the race and re­li­gious rhetoric of­ten used to di­vide the pop­u­la­tion, Row­ley urged Gon­za­les to sit with the unions and “re­ceive from them, prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions on how to deal with the WASA prob­lem, be­cause there is a WASA prob­lem.”

Claim­ing Trinidad was heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter, Row­ley re­called his ini­tial ob­jec­tions to such a sys­tem when he oc­cu­pied the op­po­si­tion bench­es.

Pro­vid­ing Gon­za­les with the choice to co-op any oth­er min­is­ter he wished to aid him in this ven­ture, Row­ley read from a Cab­i­net Note dat­ed Jan­u­ary 25 which ap­proved “a bank to keep on pro­vid­ing US $60 mil­lion to pay for de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter for a lit­tle pe­ri­od.”

“This is what has been go­ing on and the Gov­ern­ment is nev­er in a po­si­tion to pay that mon­ey for WASA, so the Gov­ern­ment goes to a bank and bor­rows it.”

Row­ley said this had left tax­pay­ers run­ning a debt of US $324 mil­lion, “a grow­ing debt” which T&T was com­mit­ted to pay­ing un­til 2034.

De­spite this, he said that kind of mon­ey had not man­aged to solve the coun­try’s wa­ter prob­lems.

With De­sal­cott on­ly pro­vid­ing 40 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day, which is a frac­tion of what WASA needs to ser­vice the coun­try and which is con­sum­ing a large amount of for­eign ex­change, the rest of the WASA sup­plies 194 mil­lion gal­lons per day from non-de­sali­nat­ed means.

“WASA is bank­rupt in the sim­plest of terms and that bank­rupt­cy has not been ef­fect­ed be­cause the Cab­i­net in­ter­venes every so of­ten and pro­vides mon­ey in this hu­mon­gous way, on­ly for the sup­ply of that de­sal wa­ter,” Row­ley re­vealed.

“De­sal­cott and de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter has bank­rupt­ed WASA.”

To tax­pay­ers, he said, “All your wa­ter rates can’t pay this.”

In ad­di­tion to meet­ing with the trade unions, Row­ley has al­so giv­en Gon­za­les per­mis­sion to share the re­struc­tur­ing plan for WASA with the labour lead­ers.

Re­fer­ring to all the mat­ters in­volv­ing the State, Row­ley said, “I have in­struct­ed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to come to the Par­lia­ment and give you, the peo­ple, a sum­ma­ry of all the mat­ters we have been in­volved in so far.”

This will spell out all the claims that were made–both set­tled and un­set­tled–“To let you get a flavour of what we have been deal­ing with be­cause the se­cre­cy that they want is what they hid­ing be­hind…and I am not about keep­ing se­crets for any­body again in this coun­try. I will tell you every­thing I know.”

Young in­struct­ed to lay full de­tails of the Petrotrin ar­bi­tra­tion in Par­lia­ment

Mean­while, the prime min­is­ter has al­so in­struct­ed En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to lay in the Par­lia­ment next Fri­day, the “full, unabridged de­tails” of the Petrotrin ar­bi­tra­tion so the pub­lic will be privy to what re­al­ly hap­pened and read the de­tails for them­selves.