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Monday, May 5, 2025

WASA's billion-dollar woes span decades

by

SHALIZA HASSANALI and ANNA-LISA PAUL
1786 days ago
20200613

On­ly about 50 per cent of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty's (WASA) 400,000 res­i­den­tial cus­tomers gen­er­al­ly re­ceive a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply. Dur­ing the dry sea­son, how­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion be­comes even more crit­i­cal as 35 to 40 per cent of its cus­tomers ob­tain the es­sen­tial com­mod­i­ty.

For the rest of cus­tomers, the sup­ply is not ef­fi­cient or re­li­able, and some are left frus­trat­ed with the qual­i­ty of wa­ter com­ing from their taps some­times de­scribed as "mud­dy", "mau­by coloured" among oth­er names.

The ra­tioning of wa­ter in var­i­ous ar­eas has be­come the norm. But while it has be­come frus­trat­ing to those cus­tomers on a lim­it­ed sup­ply, it is a dis­ser­vice to the thou­sands who have nev­er been able to en­joy a potable sup­ply of wa­ter in the com­fort of their homes for decades.

WASA has had to im­ple­ment a wa­ter man­age­ment plan forc­ing cus­tomers to op­er­ate with a sched­ule, some get­ting a sup­ply twice or three times a week, oth­ers claim­ing they have not been get­ting wa­ter weeks and some­times even months.

WASA, the com­pa­ny that sup­plies wa­ter to the cit­i­zens of T&T, was es­tab­lished by an Act of Par­lia­ment in 1965 to man­age the wa­ter and sew­er­age sec­tor of the coun­try. An es­sen­tial com­po­nent of its man­date is the de­liv­ery of a safe, re­li­able and ef­fi­cient wa­ter sup­ply to sat­is­fy the de­mand of all sec­tors of the econ­o­my. 55 years lat­er and WASA has not been able to de­liv­er on its man­date. In­stead, WASA has be­come a bur­den to the State and its tax­pay­ers.

With an an­nu­al op­er­at­ing cost of close to $3 bil­lion, while earn­ing a lit­tle less than 25 per cent of that fig­ure in most years, WASA has to be bailed out with tax­pay­ers' mon­ey.

A 2018 Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) re­vealed that WASA's ex­pen­di­ture for the fis­cal year 2017 amount­ed to $2.88 bil­lion, while its in­come for the same pe­ri­od was $709 mil­lion. The short­fall of close to $2 bil­lion was cov­ered by a gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion.

Over the years the au­thor­i­ty has been sad­dled with a bal­loon­ing staff, poor man­age­ment, ex­treme­ly low wa­ter rates to cus­tomers–the low­est in the Caribbean–and age­ing in­fra­struc­ture. To com­pound this, they now have a $350-$400 mil­lion debt out­stand­ing for con­trac­tors who pro­vid­ed ser­vices.

De­ci­sive moves by for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter in the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion Robert Le Hunte a month ago to start the ball rolling as he tried to turn WASA in­to a vi­able and ef­fi­cient com­pa­ny, led to Le Hunte clash­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in Cab­i­net and sub­se­quent­ly re­sign­ing over an al­leged split on pol­i­cy mat­ters.

Le Hunte re­signed be­cause Cab­i­net did not ap­prove his pro­pos­al for a $1.5 bil­lion me­ter­ing sys­tem. It was a project which he had worked on with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank to even­tu­al­ly pro­vide T&T a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply for all cit­i­zens.

Le Hunte was asked to with­draw the Cab­i­net note with a pro­pos­al to im­prove WASA’s dis­tri­b­u­tion and sup­ply of wa­ter. This, to Le Hunte, ap­peared to be a con­flict in pol­i­cy.

Le Hunte had wit­nessed first-hand the hard­ships that a large por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion faces due to the ab­sence of a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply. The pro­vi­sion of wa­ter to all cit­i­zens in the short­est pos­si­ble time was–apart from be­ing es­sen­tial–some­thing that was very close to his heart.

The case for me­ter­ing

De­spite suc­ces­sive rec­om­men­da­tions over the years as to how WASA could ef­fec­tive­ly serve its cus­tomers and be­come less de­pen­dent on the State's cof­fers, a for­mer WASA CEO cit­ed sev­er­al rea­sons why sit­ting ad­min­is­tra­tions have turned a blind eye to the myr­i­ad of prob­lems plagu­ing the cash-strapped au­thor­i­ty.

Dr Jim Lee Young sur­mised that chief among the is­sues hin­der­ing WASA from op­er­at­ing suc­cess­ful­ly was a lack of po­lit­i­cal will, cor­rup­tion, poor man­age­ment, union in­ter­fer­ence, and the lack of mon­ey.

He fur­ther ex­plained, "The lack of po­lit­i­cal will to grasp the bull by the horns stems from the fact that wa­ter is seen as a right and no gov­ern­ment wants to be seen to in­crease rates sig­nif­i­cant­ly so close to a gen­er­al elec­tion. With­out such rate in­creas­es, WASA will al­ways be rev­enue con­strained and un­able to in­vest in their in­fra­struc­ture. At the same time WASA is very in­ef­fi­cient com­pared to oth­er wa­ter com­pa­nies, again there is the lack of po­lit­i­cal will to tack­le a com­plete re­struc­tur­ing as this will re­sult in job loss­es."

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, Lee Young said with­out a me­ter­ing sys­tem, it would be im­pos­si­ble to solve WASA's lin­ger­ing prob­lems.

"The cost of me­ter­ing is eas­i­ly hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars and the chal­lenge has been and still is where will the mon­ey come from?"

He said the longer WASA took to in­stall me­ters, the hard­er it will be­come.

He felt, how­ev­er, that at some stage, "you are go­ing to have to bite the bul­let and me­ter."

Me­ter­ing, Lee Young said, must be ac­com­pa­nied by a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in wa­ter rates so that WASA does not lose rev­enue and can even­tu­al­ly pay for the me­ters.

The lack of me­ter­ing has re­sult­ed in peo­ple wast­ing wa­ter, while WASA has no mon­ey to fix its de­cay­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

The au­thor­i­ty pro­duces and dis­trib­utes 240 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter dai­ly. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly, 50 per cent of WASA's wa­ter is lost through leaks and theft. Dai­ly, WASA gets about 150 leaks due to its age­ing pipelines. A cus­tomer us­es al­most 90 gal­lons of wa­ter per day, al­though the rec­om­mend­ed in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard is 44 gal­lons per day.

On­ly three per cent of WASA's 400,000 res­i­den­tial cus­tomers have me­ters, while 80 per cent of its com­mer­cial cus­tomers are me­tered. It would cost WASA be­tween $1 bil­lion to $1.5 bil­lion to in­stall me­ters in the home of every res­i­den­tial cus­tomer and be­tween four to five years to com­plete the project.

WASA's wa­ter tar­iff is al­so said to be the low­est in the world, as the av­er­age house­hold pays $3 a day. Res­i­den­tial cus­tomers are charged $1.75 for 220 gal­lons of wa­ter. The re­gion­al bench­mark is US$1 per cu­bic me­tre.

Lee Young claimed WASA was prac­ti­cal­ly giv­ing away its wa­ter. “The nar­ra­tive that has been ob­served is that when some­one is me­tered their bill typ­i­cal­ly falls as they are more con­scious of us­age and con­serve, thus WASA can lose sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue. How­ev­er, this is off­set by WASA's NRW (non-rev­enue wa­ter) drop­ping so there are op­er­a­tional cost sav­ings." Lee Young said WASA has al­ways and con­tin­ues to lack the nec­es­sary rev­enue to in­vest and main­tain their in­fra­struc­ture be­cause of its "ridicu­lous­ly low rates."

Lee Young said if wa­ter rates were to rise, WASA could cov­er their op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es and pro­vide an ef­fi­cient and ac­cept­able lev­el of ser­vice, while at the same time re­main vi­able and main­tain their in­fra­struc­ture.

Un­less WASA’s cus­tomers are me­tered and re­struc­tur­ing of the cash-strapped com­pa­ny takes place, Lee Young said noth­ing will change.

"The prob­lem, as I see it, is in­ad­e­quate rev­enue from too low rates, com­bined with an in­ef­fi­cient or­gan­i­sa­tion that is used for po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age and in­flu­ence."

Wa­ter rates in the Caribbean

1. T&T–In May 2019, WASA of­fi­cials con­firmed do­mes­tic rates ranged from $108 (TT) to $304 per quar­ter or about $1.20 to $3.38 per day. In­dus­tri­al rates based on me­tered us­age ranged from $3.50 cu­bic me­tre to $12.00 per cu­bic me­tre.

2. Grena­da–In No­vem­ber 2019, of­fi­cials es­ti­mat­ed that a sin­gle con­sumer cur­rent­ly paid EC$8 for the first 1,000 gal­lons of wa­ter.

3. Bar­ba­dos–In Ju­ly 2009, over 40 cu­bic me­tres–$7.78 per m3–up from $4.86. The new rate struc­ture for fixed-rate cus­tomers will range from $29.44 to $117.76 per month, up from be­tween $18.40 and $73.60; while the rate for com­mer­cial cus­tomers is now $4.66 per cu­bic me­tre (m3), up from $2.91 and the ship's rate is $8.08 up from $5.05.

Cost to re­pair WASA's lin­ger­ing woes

It would cost WASA $12.7 bil­lion to fix some of its wa­ter sup­ply and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works.

*$10 bil­lion–To re­place 7,200 kilo­me­tres of age­ing pipelines.

*$1.2 bil­lion–To in­stall wa­ter me­ters at homes, busi­ness­es and in in­dus­tri­al ar­eas.

*$1 bil­lion–To fix in­ter-con­nec­tiv­i­ty is­sues.

*$500 mil­lion–To im­prove the wa­ter stor­age ca­pac­i­ty.

'No de­sire to car­ry out a rate re­view'

Lee Young, who was al­so an ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor at the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion, left the com­mis­sion in March. Dur­ing his two-year tenure, Lee Young said, the is­sue of in­creas­ing wa­ter rates had been re­in­forced. Lee Young said al­though both WASA and T&TEC ur­gent­ly re­quire in­creas­es in their rates, "There is no de­sire at this time to al­low the reg­u­la­tor to car­ry out a rate re­view."

Over­staffed, over­bur­dened

Claim­ing that man­age­ment is­sues were an­oth­er ma­jor fac­tor af­fect­ing WASA’s per­for­mance, Lee Young said it was over­staffed–a fact the 2018 PAC con­firmed as they found WASA was op­er­at­ing with 2,000 more em­ploy­ees than it need­ed.

When he joined WASA in 2009, Lee Young said its work­force was around 4,300. With re­struc­tur­ing, they were able to re­duce the fig­ure to un­der 4,000 a year lat­er.

In Sep­tem­ber 2018, chair­man of WASA Rom­ney Thomas in a Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle said WASA had 5,150 em­ploy­ees on the pay­roll which in­clud­ed per­ma­nent, con­tract and tem­po­rary work­ers. At the time, he said, WASA spent over $1.1 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly in salaries. Thomas cal­cu­lat­ed WASA’s month­ly wage bill was $91 mil­lion.

Asked what would be a rea­son­able work­force for WASA, Lee Young ex­plained, "A com­mon­ly used met­ric to mea­sure the ef­fi­cien­cy of a wa­ter util­i­ty is the num­ber of em­ploy­ees per thou­sand cus­tomers."

In de­vel­oped coun­tries, the ra­tio is typ­i­cal­ly around three to five em­ploy­ees per thou­sand cus­tomers.

"In Bar­ba­dos, it is around eight. WASA is around 14 to 15. On a com­par­a­tive ba­sis, WASA is very ef­fi­cient. If you as­sume WASA has 400,000 cus­tomers then ap­ply­ing the Bar­ba­dos met­ric of eight WASA should on­ly have 3,200 em­ploy­ees."

Should WASA be pri­va­tised?

Lee Young said he would not sup­port such a move, "At this time the prop­er reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight re­quired to man­age a pri­vate wa­ter util­i­ty and to en­sure that cus­tomers are not dis­ad­van­taged, does not cur­rent­ly ex­ist."

How­ev­er, Lee Young said he would "sup­port a re­struc­tur­ing along the lines of a Petrotrin/Her­itage ap­proach and re­move all po­lit­i­cal med­dling and union in­ter­fer­ence."

He said there was a need to "put a good ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team in place and let them do what they have to do.”

Al­though many fea­si­bil­i­ty re­ports were done on WASA over the years, Lee Young said one can on­ly sur­mise why the rec­om­men­da­tions from these re­ports were not im­ple­ment­ed or whether they at­tempt­ed and failed.

He spec­u­lat­ed, "Prob­a­ble rea­sons are like­ly lack of po­lit­i­cal will, prob­lems are too dif­fi­cult, no mon­ey, unions' in­com­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion."

WASA chair­man speaks

In a re­cent tele­phone in­ter­view, WASA chair­man Rom­ney Thomas de­nied that there were plans to sell WASA to a Chi­nese firm. Thomas said the in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia was fake.

“I don't know any­thing about that. As far as I am aware, that is not true."

Re­gard­ing how much WASA owed con­trac­tors, Thomas ad­mit­ted it was "sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey. The last check I re­mem­bered from our sys­tem was close to $350 mil­lion to $400 mil­lion."

Those pay­ments, Thomas said, were ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over time. "We have been mak­ing arrange­ments to pay all ver­i­fied claims over time."

Asked to con­firm if one con­trac­tor was owed $100 mil­lion, Thomas did not say.

Asked why WASA con­tin­ues to be faced with on­go­ing is­sues, Thomas said the prob­lems fac­ing the au­thor­i­ty did not de­vel­op overnight.

He of­fered no com­ment as to what would be their next step with its me­ter­ing plan.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last year, Le Hunte said if WASA were to pri­va­tise, the wa­ter com­pa­ny would be able to pro­vide bet­ter ser­vice but cus­tomers would have to pay more for wa­ter.

"Pri­vati­sa­tion comes with a cost. Where I am, the Gov­ern­ment is not look­ing at pri­vatis­ing WASA. What I have been do­ing is us­ing the pri­vate sec­tor ap­proach in an at­tempt to im­prove WASA's in­ef­fi­cien­cies."

Le Hunte gives the fig­ures

In May 2019, Le Hunte said it would cost WASA close to $13 bil­lion to fix some of the ma­jor is­sues af­fect­ing the wa­ter sup­ply and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work. In 2017, Le Hunte stat­ed, WASA's res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers had owed the au­thor­i­ty over $700 mil­lion in ar­rears which they were try­ing to re­cov­er, while con­trac­tors and ven­dors had sub­mit­ted un­val­i­dat­ed claims of $198 mil­lion.

Le Hunte said WASA had been en­coun­ter­ing in­ter­nal man­age­ment is­sues.

"WASA is part of a big­ger prob­lem of ac­count­abil­i­ty and man­age­ment is­sues that we have in T&T and in our State en­ter­pris­es."

Le Hunte's pre­de­ces­sor, An­cil An­toine, in May 2015, said his pre­de­ces­sor Gan­ga Singh un­der­took an ex­ten­sive and ex­pen­sive pipe-lay­ing ex­er­cise across the coun­try.

In Oc­to­ber 2013, Singh claimed when they en­tered of­fice in 2010 on­ly 18 per cent of the coun­try had been re­ceiv­ing wa­ter 24/7, whilst 38 per cent of the coun­try was get­ting wa­ter five days a week.

Singh claimed that with­in three years the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship regime had been able to in­crease the 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply to 49 per cent of the coun­try, while 75 per cent of the coun­try was get­ting wa­ter five days a week.

In No­vem­ber 2014, then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar praised Singh for in­creas­ing the dai­ly wa­ter sup­ply fig­ures to its cus­tomers to 69 per cent in Trinidad, and 70 per cent in To­ba­go.

Beetham Waste-Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant waste­ful, ill-con­ceived

In May 2019, Le Hunte de­scribed the Beetham Waste­water Treat­ment Plant con­tract­ed to Su­per In­dus­tries Ser­vices (SIS) as a waste­ful and ill-con­ceived project that cost tax­pay­ers close to $1 bil­lion with­out pro­duc­ing one drop of wa­ter.

He said of­fi­cials were forced to con­sid­er that $1 bil­lion as a loss as any at­tempt to move for­ward with it would have cost an ad­di­tion­al US$250 mil­lion (TT$1.9 bil­lion), to on­ly pro­duce ten mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter.

Le Hunte said the in­vest­ment was not sal­vage­able, oth­er than WASA us­ing some of the pipes from the dis­con­tin­ued project to help in pipeline dis­tri­b­u­tion in oth­er ar­eas.

In 2015, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) award­ed the con­tract to SIS for the de­sign and build of the re­cy­cling plant, to­geth­er with pipelines and wa­ter stor­age fa­cil­i­ties.

SIS did not even fin­ish half of the job when it stopped work on the project af­ter the Gov­ern­ment changed fol­low­ing the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion. It was re­port­ed that SIS’s Kr­ish­na Lal­la al­leged­ly left the coun­try. Over 75 per cent of the mon­ey had been spent on the project by the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Sev­ern Trent a waste of tax­pay­ers' $$

For­mer WASA di­rec­tor and trade union­ist Clyde Weath­er­head has de­scribed the US$50 mil­lion con­tract award­ed to Sev­ern Trent to turn WASA around as a colos­sal fail­ure.

The British-based firm was among sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions/teams re­tained over the years to make WASA vi­able and ef­fi­cient. Weath­er­head said every Gov­ern­ment which came in­to pow­er "played pol­i­tics" with WASA.

Sev­ern Trent was one of five com­pa­nies that had sub­mit­ted bids to man­age the au­thor­i­ty in 1995. Their scope of works in­volved im­prov­ing WASA's rev­enues, leak re­duc­tion, re­place­ment of age­ing pipelines, in­stal­la­tion of me­tres, de­vel­op wa­ter stor­age, debt col­lec­tion, staff re­duc­tion and to pri­va­tise WASA.

He said pri­vati­sa­tion back then in­volved putting WASA in­to the hands of a pri­vate firm to man­age.

The news of Sev­ern Trent, Weath­er­head said, came af­ter WASA had sent home 978 work­ers in 1993. When word got around that Sev­ern Trent had won the con­tract in man­ag­ing WASA’s af­fairs, Weath­er­head said the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, Na­tion­al Union and Gov­ern­ment Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers and T&T Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion came up with an “al­ter­na­tive plan” which they pre­sent­ed to then pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh.

Their pro­pos­al, de­scribed as a pla­gia­rism of Sev­ern Trent’s plan, was re­ject­ed.

Weath­er­head, who served as PSA pres­i­dent for four years, said the unions' view was that the con­tract should have been ter­mi­nat­ed. He said if that was done, all the Gov­ern­ment would have had to pay Sev­ern Trent was a $5 mil­lion mo­bil­i­sa­tion fee.

Weath­er­head said when Sev­ern Trent came on board, they want­ed to sell WASA a soft­ware called "storms" to tack­le leak­ages and wa­ter wastages for US$2.5 mil­lion which the board was not in agree­ment with. To the unions’ sur­prise, Weath­er­head said, the board was even­tu­al­ly over­ruled and the soft­ware pur­chased. How the soft­ware ad­dressed the is­sue of the leaks, he said, was the big ques­tion as WASA con­tin­ues to lose a large per­cent­age of its wa­ter dai­ly through rup­tured pipelines.

He said dur­ing the three years Sev­ern Trent man­aged WASA, the de­liv­ery of wa­ter nev­er im­proved. That project, Weath­er­head said, turned in­to a "colos­sal waste" of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

"The proof of the pud­ding is in the eat­ing. We have no bet­ter wa­ter ser­vice to­day."

He said Sev­ern Trent was try­ing to use T&T as a gate­way to en­ter Latin Amer­i­ca. "There was a fight among six com­pa­nies in the world to con­trol wa­ter and Sev­ern Trent was one of them...What they sold as a plan to the Gov­ern­ment to im­prove WASA it did not hap­pen. By the time Sev­ern Trent left here the ob­jec­tive of that con­tract nev­er ma­te­ri­alised."

He said WASA has nev­er pro­vid­ed a re­li­able ser­vice while the promise of wa­ter for all by 2000 was nev­er achieved.

In the 1980s he said the idea of me­ter­ing was es­tab­lished but al­most four decades lat­er it re­mains out­stand­ing.

Hav­ing served WASA's board from 1995 to 1997, Weath­er­head said apart from Sev­ern Trent, then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning brought in a "Dream Team" to deal with the is­sues plagu­ing WASA but that too fell short. He said the Beetham Waste­water Treat­ment Plant was an­oth­er project that was left hang­ing af­ter mil­lions had been spent. Oth­er plans were al­so put for­ward, Weath­er­head said, but noth­ing worked.

He said what was need­ed to turn around WASA was po­lit­i­cal will and fi­nances.

"WASA is a util­i­ty that no Gov­ern­ment has se­ri­ous­ly tack­led.”

WASA


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