RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has read the ri­ot act to WASA Man­agers say­ing they will be held to ac­count if they fail to prop­er­ly man­age pub­lic projects.

Speak­ing at the Guapo/ Cap-de-Ville Pipeline Project launch on Sat­ur­day, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said the first phase of the Cap-de-Ville pipelay­ing start­ed in 2020 and took two and a half years.

Strong­ly crit­i­ciz­ing man­agers who were in charge of the first phase, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said there was no rea­son why that phase took so long.

He said the sec­ond phase will take 90 days and will bring wa­ter to 10,000 peo­ple.

He al­so re­vealed that ex­ten­sive works will be­gin in 2024 not­ing that the gov­ern­ment was seek­ing a US$80 mil­lion loan from the In­ter- Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank to ex­e­cute the planned works.

Em­pha­siz­ing that 2024 will be an ex­cit­ing year, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said ten pro­duc­tion wells will be dug while WASA will im­prove its wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

Mean­while, Point Fortin MP Kennedy Richards said wa­ter scarci­ty was a ma­jor prob­lem.

"A day with­out wa­ter is a painful day but we have the full sup­port of the Min­is­ter and WASA. We are con­fi­dent that the wa­ter sit­u­a­tion will im­prove," Richards said.

Al­so at­tend­ing the launch were WASA's Act­ing CEO Kelvin Ro­main and WASA's Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Man­ag­er Daniel Plen­ty.