Minister WASA deserve praise

THE EDITOR: Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales and the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) deserve some measure of praise for completing the authority's maintenance project on the Caroni Water Treatment Plant this past weekend ahead of schedule with minimum hardships for consumers.

Such commitment and efficiency coming from a public utility under intense public scrutiny and criticism within recent times point perhaps to something good in the making.

WASA did several things right in the execution of the project. Most importantly, the utility informed consumers of the nature of the project and possible hardships they may face in advance of the execution of the project. Consumers were given updates on the progress of the maintenance operations.

Gonzales and top WASA officials were present at the worksites monitoring the work and providing moral support to the workers. WASA's management will do well to analyse the outcome of this success story and hopefully apply the lessons learnt to other aspects of its operations.

The disappointment, however, was in the attitude of those opposition UNC parliamentarians who could not see any good coming from the exercise. Most disgusting were the comments from their spokesman Barry Padarath. He criticised WASA for shutting down plant to carry out the maintenance works.

What Padarath did not say is how he would have advised WASA to do the exercise. Surely, it is always quite easy to criticise and condemn when in opposition.

However, I did observe that there were some progressive UNC councillors in central Trinidad who understood what Padarath couldn’t. They threw caution to the wind and praised WASA for keeping consumers informed and completing the project ahead of schedule.

HARRY PARTAP

former MP