$604m owed to WASA

SOME $604 million is owed to the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA), authority officials told a joint select committee (JSC), chaired by Stephen Creese at Tower D, Wrightson Road, Port of Spain on Wednesday.

Customer care director Alan Poon King told JSC member Wade Mark, the debt comprises $469 million owed by households, $79 million owed by commerce/industry and $56 million owed by state agencies.

In turn, WASA owes its contractors $342 million, said acting finance director Rachelle Wilkie, in reply to a query by member Rushton Paray. The authority also needs $934 million for an intended ten-year programme to replace its 157 kilometres of old pipelines, acting programmes director Denise Lee Sing Pereira, told Creese.

She said that to fund the upgrade, arithmetically WASA would need a 100 per cent hike in water rates.

Poon King said 40 to 50 per cent of water produced by WASA ends up “unaccounted for.” This includes leaks from pipelines, losses by customers such as overflowing water tanks and water used by people with illegal connections to WASA pipelines. Of the latter, WASA chairman Romney Charles chipped in, “That’s a big part.”

Charles saw one solution as metering, saying consumers with overflowing tanks would become more mindful. With a cost to install, he said a Canadian firm is doing a feasibility study on metering. He admitted to not knowing how many people have illegal connections.

Mark said areas of Belmont have lacked a water supply for five weeks. Charles replied that on Tuesday a booster had burnt out but had been re-installed on Wednesday. Asked how Parliament could help WASA, Charles called for higher fines for illegal connections, illegal discharges into water courses and breaches of water hose regulations. He said illegal water-trucking is also a problem.