Gail Alexan­der

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty’s (WASA’s) board should be go­ing af­ter the big cor­po­ra­tions that owe mil­lions in ar­rears be­cause the cash-strapped av­er­age per­son can­not deal with this ad­di­tion­al ex­pense right now, said Ki­ran Singh, pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce.

Singh was speak­ing on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments re­gard­ing both WASA and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

Last Fri­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les as­sured that con­trary to what UNC Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts was stat­ing, T&TEC rates aren’t be­ing dou­bled and tripled. Gon­za­les said T&TEC’s rate re­view, now be­fore the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), will be sent to him to pe­ruse when com­plet­ed.

Singh said, “Mil­lions of dol­lars in ar­rears to WASA re­main un­col­lect­ed. The Au­thor­i­ty is fi­nan­cial­ly dis­tressed and has been so for many years. Re­cent­ly, WASA pro­posed a mas­sive dri­ve to col­lect out­stand­ing ar­rears. The na­tion wit­nessed the frus­tra­tion of hun­dreds of pan­icked cus­tomers queued out­side pay­ment cen­tres. They braved in­clement weath­er, throw­ing cau­tion to the wind and con­gre­gat­ed to up­date their ac­counts for fear of be­ing dis­con­nect­ed.”

But not­ing cur­rent COVID pres­sures many are suf­fer­ing, Singh added, “The da­ta pre­sent­ed by the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter re­vealed there are al­most 5,000 work­ers and about 500 man­agers. From a math­e­mat­i­cal stand­point, this equates to one man­ag­er per 10 work­ers. Is this sce­nario the most ef­fi­cient use of the pub­lic’s purse? It begs the ques­tion: Does this top-heavy man­age­ment at the state-owned com­pa­ny demon­strate pru­dent hu­man re­sources al­lo­ca­tion?“

“One must al­so ques­tion how many of these man­agers and work­ers are em­ployed on con­tract. It is unimag­in­able a state-owned com­pa­ny, which is a mo­nop­oly in its own right, isn’t mak­ing a prof­it. WASA is owed an in­sur­mount­able amount of mon­ey.”

“WASA’s board should be go­ing af­ter the big cor­po­ra­tions that owe mil­lions in ar­rears as the av­er­age man and woman in the street can­not deal with this ad­di­tion­al ex­pense right now, sim­ply be­cause in­comes are down. Many are out of work. Some don’t know if and when they’ll get back steady jobs. But there are the ex­cep­tions of those for­tu­nate enough to re­ceive full salaries.’’

“If we’re look­ing at bring­ing in WASA’s ar­rears, our so­lu­tions should at least in­clude look­ing first at sources ow­ing big mon­ey and where it can be paid quick­ly,’’ he said.