Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is fac­ing a $287 mil­lion re­duc­tion in its bud­get­ed ex­pen­di­ture for fis­cal 2027, in­clud­ing a $233 mil­lion cut in per­son­nel fund­ing, but Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath is as­sur­ing em­ploy­ees that there are no plans to re­duce the au­thor­i­ty’s es­tab­lished work­force.

Padarath says he has al­ready dis­cussed the re­duced per­son­nel al­lo­ca­tion with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and ex­pects ad­di­tion­al fund­ing to be pro­vid­ed dur­ing the fi­nan­cial year.

The changes are out­lined in the Draft Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue and Ex­pen­di­ture of Statu­to­ry Boards and Sim­i­lar Bod­ies for 2027, which place WASA’s to­tal ex­pen­di­ture at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3 bil­lion, down from a re­vised $3.29 bil­lion in 2026.

Among the most sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions is the al­lo­ca­tion for per­son­nel, which falls from a re­vised $602.8 mil­lion in 2026 to $369.5 mil­lion in 2027. That rep­re­sents a de­crease of $233.3 mil­lion, or 38.7 per cent.

The cat­e­go­ry cov­ers salaries, wages, over­time, al­lowances and em­ploy­er con­tri­bu­tions. With­in it, salaries and cost-of-liv­ing al­lowances fall from $197.1 mil­lion to $143.6 mil­lion, while wages and CO­LA de­cline from $234.8 mil­lion to $133.7 mil­lion.

Com­bined over­time pro­vi­sions for month­ly paid of­fi­cers and dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers al­so fall sharply, from $72 mil­lion to $33.3 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, when com­pared with the orig­i­nal 2026 per­son­nel al­lo­ca­tion of $441.1 mil­lion, rather than the re­vised es­ti­mate, the re­duc­tion is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16.2 per cent.

Ques­tioned about the sub­stan­tial de­crease and whether it sig­nalled pos­si­ble job loss­es, Padarath yes­ter­day ruled out any re­duc­tion in WASA’s es­tab­lished staffing com­ple­ment.

“I con­firmed with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance that it is an­tic­i­pat­ed that we will sup­ple­ment this vote. How­ev­er, there is no plan to re­duce staff from WASA’s es­tab­lish­ment,” he said.

The bud­get es­ti­mates al­so re­veal a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in fund­ing for con­tract em­ploy­ment, which is record­ed sep­a­rate­ly un­der goods and ser­vices.

That al­lo­ca­tion falls from $444.3 mil­lion in the re­vised 2026 es­ti­mates to $346.5 mil­lion in 2027, a de­crease of $97.8 mil­lion, or 22 per cent.

Padarath ex­plained that WASA pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly en­gages work­ers on a short-term ba­sis to un­der­take spe­cif­ic projects, but ex­pects to re­ly less on such em­ploy­ment in the com­ing fi­nan­cial year. He said this was be­cause of work al­ready com­plet­ed through short-term em­ploy­ment arrange­ments dur­ing the pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial year.

“So it is not a mat­ter of re­duc­ing staffing. This is in the area of short-term em­ploy­ment,” he said.

Padarath added that should ad­di­tion­al fund­ing be­come nec­es­sary, the Gov­ern­ment could sup­ple­ment the al­lo­ca­tion dur­ing the mid-year re­view.

“There is no an­tic­i­pa­tion of any re­duc­tion of staffing in terms of the es­tab­lished com­ple­ment of staff at WASA,” he main­tained.

Wa­ter truck­ing

gets $30M in­crease

De­spite the re­duc­tion in over­all ex­pen­di­ture, WASA is bud­get­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly more for wa­ter truck­ing in fis­cal 2027.

The al­lo­ca­tion in­creas­es from $52.6 mil­lion in both the orig­i­nal and re­vised 2026 es­ti­mates to $82.7 mil­lion in 2027. That rep­re­sents an in­crease of $30.1 mil­lion, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 57 per cent.

The new pro­vi­sion al­so ex­ceeds the $54.4 mil­lion record­ed as ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture on wa­ter truck­ing in 2025.

Ex­plain­ing the in­crease, Padarath said the Gov­ern­ment is ex­pand­ing its net­work of wa­ter stor­age tank farms, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties that have his­tor­i­cal­ly ex­pe­ri­enced un­re­li­able sup­plies.

He said sev­er­al tank farm projects have al­ready been es­tab­lished or are un­der con­struc­tion in south­ern con­stituen­cies, with the pro­gramme be­ing ex­tend­ed to com­mu­ni­ties along the east coast, in­clud­ing Ma­yaro, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la and To­co/San­gre Grande.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, wa­ter truck­ing will be re­quired to ser­vice these fa­cil­i­ties un­til planned de­sali­na­tion plants be­come op­er­a­tional.

“For far too long, these con­stituen­cies and com­mu­ni­ties have been un­der­served and un­der-re­sourced,” Padarath said.

He ex­plained that the ex­pan­sion of the tank farm pro­gramme ne­ces­si­tat­ed ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for truck­ing ser­vices, ac­count­ing for the $82.7 mil­lion pro­vi­sion.

How­ev­er, Padarath did not pro­vide a time­line for when the de­sali­na­tion plants would be­come op­er­a­tional or when re­liance on wa­ter truck­ing could be re­duced.

More fund­ing for in­fra­struc­ture re­pairs

An­oth­er no­table in­crease is re­flect­ed in the al­lo­ca­tion for “oth­er con­tract­ed ser­vices,” which ris­es from a re­vised $143.6 mil­lion in 2026 to $270 mil­lion in 2027. That rep­re­sents an in­crease of $126.4 mil­lion, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 88 per cent.

Against the orig­i­nal 2026 pro­vi­sion of $157.6 mil­lion, the in­crease is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 71 per cent.

Padarath said the ad­di­tion­al fund­ing would sup­port pipeline main­te­nance, crit­i­cal re­pairs and the re­place­ment of age­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

He in­di­cat­ed that the new fi­nan­cial year would see in­creased con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty as WASA un­der­takes work to im­prove its dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work and sup­port new de­sali­na­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

“In this fi­nan­cial year you will see a lot of con­struc­tion, a lot of chang­ing out of old di­lap­i­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture, as well as new in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port the de­sali­na­tion plants,” he said.

The min­is­ter ex­plained that some of those ac­tiv­i­ties would be fi­nanced un­der the oth­er con­tract­ed ser­vices al­lo­ca­tion. How­ev­er, he did not pro­vide a break­down of how the $270 mil­lion would be dis­trib­uted among the var­i­ous projects and ser­vices.

Ve­hi­cle and equip­ment rentals slashed

Mean­while, one of the sharpest re­duc­tions in WASA’s ex­pen­di­ture es­ti­mates is in the al­lo­ca­tion for rent­ing or leas­ing ve­hi­cles and equip­ment.

That pro­vi­sion falls from $100 mil­lion in 2026 to just $100,000 in 2027, rep­re­sent­ing a re­duc­tion of $99.9 mil­lion, or 99.9 per cent.

The de­crease is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant, giv­en that ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture un­der the same head­ing amount­ed to $138.5 mil­lion in 2025.

Padarath at­trib­uted the re­duc­tion to WASA’s de­ci­sion to pur­chase ve­hi­cles and equip­ment that it pre­vi­ous­ly re­lied on rent­ing.

“In the last fi­nan­cial year, WASA in­vest­ed in pur­chas­ing a num­ber of ve­hi­cles as well as pieces of equip­ment that they use quite reg­u­lar­ly,” he ex­plained.

He said those ac­qui­si­tions were ex­pect­ed to re­duce the au­thor­i­ty’s de­pen­dence on rentals dur­ing the new fi­nan­cial year.

Padarath did not spec­i­fy how many ve­hi­cles or pieces of equip­ment were pur­chased, their ac­qui­si­tion costs or the sav­ings ex­pect­ed from the move.

De­spite the sub­stan­tial move­ments across in­di­vid­ual cat­e­gories, WASA’s over­all goods and ser­vices al­lo­ca­tion re­mains rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble, falling from ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.297 bil­lion in the re­vised 2026 es­ti­mates to $1.289 bil­lion in 2027.