Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Chair­man of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) Lennox Sealy has apol­o­gised for last week’s dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, Mar­vin Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

The dri­ve which was an­nounced last week via a news re­lease was tar­get­ed at er­rant cus­tomers of the au­thor­i­ty.

The debt-re­cov­ery ac­tion start­ed on Wednes­day with the dis­con­nec­tion of sev­er­al cus­tomers in Barataria, San Juan and Ch­agua­nas, af­ter what WASA said were nu­mer­ous at­tempts to en­cour­age those cus­tomers to pay proved fu­tile.

WASA promised to con­tin­ue sim­i­lar ac­tion in oth­er ar­eas un­der the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty Act, which gives it the au­thor­i­ty to im­ple­ment sev­er­al puni­tive ac­tions to re­cov­er pay­ments, in­clud­ing dis­con­nec­tion of ser­vice and sale of prop­er­ties.

The ac­tion by WASA led to cus­tomers flood­ing the au­thor­i­ty’s of­fices to pay bills.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Gon­za­les said he un­der­stood that there are ar­rears to be re­cov­ered.

How­ev­er, he said the coun­try the pan­dem­ic is af­fect­ing many cit­i­zens in var­i­ous ways and, there­fore, this dri­ve that WASA’s board pro­posed should have been dis­cussed with stake­hold­ers of the au­thor­i­ty.

WASA is owed $950 mil­lion by 35,000 delin­quent cus­tomers.

The au­thor­i­ty has over 400,000 res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers on its data­base.

“There is no oblig­a­tion up­on the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor (Lennox Sealy) to con­sult with the Min­is­ter with op­er­a­tional mat­ters - and I will make that abun­dant­ly clear. How­ev­er, the fact that we are not liv­ing in or­di­nary times, we are in the midst of a glob­al pan­dem­ic and any dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve that the util­i­ty com­pa­ny wish­es to em­bark up­on must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion it would have some kind of pub­lic re­ac­tion”, Gon­za­les said.

He added: “Giv­en the fact that we are not liv­ing in or­di­nary times, any mass dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve in the midst of a pan­dem­ic should at least re­quire con­sul­ta­tions with the line min­is­ter and the line min­istry.”

The min­is­ter said he met with the board last week on oth­er mat­ters and the dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve is­sue was al­so dis­cussed.

“I met with him (Sealy) and the board to dis­cuss the progress of WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion last Fri­day and I guess the meet­ing last week Fri­day was time­ly and it was not in re­sponse to the dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve be­cause it was pre-arranged. So we met the day af­ter they start­ed the dis­con­nec­tion and it had giv­en me the per­fect plat­form to raise the is­sue with it and to ex­press my reser­va­tion and the man­ner in which it has been dealt with,” Gon­za­les ex­plained.

“The Chair­man in re­sponse apol­o­gised and he al­so apol­o­gised in the man­ner the dri­ve was han­dled and mov­ing for­ward he would have bet­ter con­sul­ta­tion on se­ri­ous mat­ters like this one mov­ing for­ward”.

The Min­is­ter added if oth­er ac­tions are to take place against the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man it will be done in­ter­nal­ly.