Gonzales: Law must prevent water scandals

MARVIN GONZALES, Minister of Public Utilities, on April 19 lamented the deliberate deprivation of 5,000 residents of Morne Diablo in south Trinidad as highly unethical, and is now examining the WASA Act to see if criminal offences were also committed by unscrupulous individuals perpetrating a water racket.

He was speaking to reporters at his ministry after hosting the launch of WASA's Customer Service Improvement Survey, designed to get customer details to improve water delivery.

In his address, Gonzales lamented the recent discovery of a large private tank farm in Freeport which was regularly filled up from WASA water pipelines and then used to fill up private water trucks, which then sold the water to hapless residents of Morne Diablo whose regular pipe-borne supply was deliberately cut off by unscrupulous individuals.

The facility, he said, consisted of 25-30 tanks, each of 1,000 gallons in capacity. He urged the public's collaboration in such matters, so that the billions of dollars the Government spends to provide a water supply would in fact see water being provided to every citizen.

Gonzales vowed to shine a light to curb dysfunction and corruption, and to uproot people bent on corruption.

He said this was a two-decade-old water racket being run under the very noses of local officials, who, he alleged, had pretended not to know about it.

Gonzales told reporters he was prepared to bring to Parliament fresh amendments to the WASA Act if it did not currently address the circumstances of that scandal.

Earlier, Minister of Local Government Faris Al-Rawi had lamented this incident of somebody turning off a tap so as to force people to pay for a private truck-borne water supply.

He endorsed the current WASA customer survey, saying if WASA has details of its customers and their needs, that could prevent someone turning a tap to lock off their supply.

Al-Rawi recalled the case of a public servant on a $5,000-a-month salary being found with $25 million in assets, commenting, "Corruption is insidious."