Gonzales: WASA staff deserve praise not criticism over ruptured pipeline

PUBLIC Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales said on Tuesday that WASA staff did not deserve certain public criticisms levelled last week because they had valiantly struggled to fix a ruptured water main at Caroni that had threatened thousands of people. He was particularly scathing about certain unnamed editorial writers.

Gonzales was addressing the official launch of the Golden Grove Booster Station. Gonzales said some staff had laboured for 48 hours without sleep to fix the pipeline.

Deviating at length from his prepared speech, he accused certain critics of having agendas. Replying to reporters' questions later, Gonzales complained that someone had created an online meme to falsely portray WASA as inserting an inadequate length of pipeline in doing the repairs. The photo was taken while the pipe was being put into position but the meme falsely pretended it was in its final position and dishonestly portrayed it as too short. He was upset that other people were sharing it.

Gonzales said 250,000 people had been affected by the ruptured pipe but WASA had averted them suffering an even longer deprivation.

He said initially he had received advice to abandon the existing pipe but the advice was rejected because to construct a totally new pipe would have taken 7-8 days, affecting people as far along the east-west corridor as Diego Martin.

"I was on the phone at 2 am and heard their pain and how overwhelmed they were," he said of WASA staff.

"We got it under control." He said the dedication of WASA staff led to the pipe being repaired within just three days.

"Many had no rest for 48 hours, no time with their families, no time for even a shower."

Gonzales continued to lamented two newspaper editorials as being unfair to WASA staff. He alleged some writers of letters to the editor and editorial writers had poison pens when they could not even fix a leak in a pipe in their home. He accused such writers of a national offensive against dedicated WASA workers.

"Do not allow them to break your spirit," he said.

Gonzales invited anyone to criticise him as a politician but not WASA's men and women working day and night in difficult circumstances.

"Bad news and self-hate will not get us anywhere," he advised the critics. "Some are invested in making only bad things happen."

Admitting to accidents in the water-distribution system such as a sewer line breaking at Longdenville, he said when professional workers were responding to fix these things, that was not the time for critics to attack them.

"Hold strain," he urged WASA workers. "Do not allow your spirit to be broken by negativity. The Lord is on our side.

"We will not be distracted by those invested with negativity."

He later explained to reporters how last week's repair had been expedited. Gonzales said a new length of steel pipe was skilfully joined to the old existing concrete pipe.

Gonzales added that a new bypass pipeline would be laid down and a switch-over would be made from the old pipeline. WASA deputy chairman Alston Fournillier chimed in to assure reporters that residents would be informed of details of the switch-over so that both residents and WASA could stock up on water beforehand.