Metering the people’s needs

On Wednesday, Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales acknowledged the complaints of Tabaquite MP Anita Haynes in Parliament about the poor delivery of water and electricity services in her constituency.

In so doing, Mr Gonzales admitted that in his constituency, Lopinot/Bon Air West, there are also water and electricity problems running for months and for some, years.

Mr Gonzales has been unusually frank about the failings of the utilities under his ministry since his appointment, calling out administrative slackness, corruption and the general lack of efficiency and accountability at T&TEC and WASA.

"I always say, as Minister of Public Utilities, that the issue of water, the issue of electricity ought not to be politicised," Mr Gonzales replied to Ms Haynes' accusations.

But there's no way to separate politics from these utilities. They are not only a tempting tool for politicians to persuade the public of their beneficence, but a basic measure of the efforts of any government to achieve its most fundamental task: to provide essential services for the population.

As for politicising these issues as one party’s way of taking credit, or finding fault with another, no government can claim success in meeting these national needs.

Ms Haynes may have the interest of her constituents at heart, but she is also throwing verbal stones from the fragility of a glass house. It's more than 22 years since the UNC's Ganga Singh sat in the Public Utilities chair and promised water for all by the year 2000.

At this point, the government can only tentatively promise water for some, sometimes.

Mr Gonzales' honesty in acknowledging the failures of the public utilities isn't as useful as creating an effective response.

It may satisfy political imperatives to mention plans to drill wells, replace water mains and rehabilitate water treatment plants, but without context, they sound like arbitrary patchwork on incremental problems.

Increasing the water supply means little when, as WASA has repeatedly admitted for decades, no less than half of the precious resource it collects continues to be lost through leaks in collapsing infrastructure.

The lack of transparency in managing repairs only adds a layer of confusion to the challenges that consumers face.

Successive governments have paid lip service to the concepts of open data and open governance, but implementing them might make the Public Utilities Ministry more transparent and less vulnerable to the whimsy of the party in power.

The utilities should move to make public live dashboards of issues, assigned priority, scheduling and completion.

Insisting on transparent operations and management would be a bold first step by Mr Gonzales to hold his ministry to a recognisable standard of performance. It’s a maxim of management that what gets measured gets done. Perhaps that may eventually become true of this country’s public utilities.