WASA THE WORST OF INDEPENDENT T&T

THE Water and Sewerage Authority recently messaged me that my account was “in arrears.” 

“Pay your bill now to avoid further debt recovery action,” the water agency told me. 

So, I duly found my receipt indicating that my payments were up to date, and I called the number provided “for further enquiries” – 662-2302, extension 6130. 

No one answered, and I left a proper message, with pertinent details. 

Common courtesy has never been in WASA’s DNA, so there was no response. 

Never mind that the officer at this extension is almost assuredly among those to be retrenched in the upcoming mass restructuring of the failed agency. 

Just over two years ago, I received a similar WASA message (they clearly have a fancy for me), this time providing an email address through which I could make a query. 

I did so, and received a response literally six months later. 

By that time, I had coughed up the disputed sum, making me a double-paying customer for that three-month period. 

I had visualised WASA’s chronic inefficiency in action in my front yard. 

You know the scenario of about a dozen workers on site, with one busily digging away while others leisurely scan the neighbourhood, smoke cigarettes and indulge in idle chatter. 

Now WASA has referred its debt portfolio to a collection agency, in a clear bid at cash flow despite being propped up by $20 billion taxpayer subsidy over the past decade alone. 

Trinidad and Tobago has every right to fear that this exercise would go off the rails. 

Up-to-date customers would be harassed and consumers without a supply would be penalised, even as 50 per cent of harvested water gush through leaks and ruined roads dot the land. 

There would be typical mass bungling. 

Don’t take my word. 

A ministerial committee, led by Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales, recently wrote a mind-numbing report on the state of the water company. 

The place is in a complete mess, the ministers said, with “a general lack of accountability,” with political patronage, and as being “dysfunctional” and “unsustainable”. 

The authority is “operating blindly” without credible information on its customer database, liabilities, payables, and even the locations of its transmission and distribution mains. 

The dysfunction is so inherent that, in its current form, WASA is “incapable of effectively satisfying its customers’ demands…” 

The organisation is unwieldy, overstaffed, unproductive, unresponsive, and has deteriorated so badly that it is “no longer effectively servicing citizens”. 

WASA is “the very antithesis of a highly productive organisation.” 

That’s a crushing condemnation of an essential and longstanding public authority. 

The agency was established in 1965 – with a mandate of “a safe, efficient and reliable water supply” – making it a corporate product of the independence movement. 

Under Dr. Eric Williams’ leadership, the society was inspired to steer its own affairs, employing visionary leadership and prudent use of its many resources. 

“You are on your own in a big world,” Williams said on the exciting day the red-white-and-black was hoisted.  

Decades, later, WASA symbolises what ails T&T – a deep-rooted absence of vision, feeble leadership, poor productivity, cronyism, misuse of taxpayers’ funds. 

That state of affairs exists throughout the public sector, of course, but is easily evident at the water company, which directly affects the lives of every citizen and is bloated with almost 5,000 workers. 

WASA reflects a wretched absence of meritocracy in the appointments of public sector officials, nepotism, lack of accountability, and arrogance. 

It depicts the deficient stewardship that has led to the collapse of a slew of state enterprises, including Petrotrin, and the mismanagement of Point Lisas Industrial Estate and other business projects. 

Clearly, no leadership and business lessons have been learned from the graveyards of these failed public agencies over the 60 years of independence. 

So, WASA would toss out its workers, introduce new technology and operating systems, and re-launch with much pomp and promise. 

But over time, it would again be stacked with weak management and political appointees, and corruption would infest and destroy its system. 

The current administration would have kicked the can down the road to a successor government that would then balk about maladministration, corporate decay and bobol. 

Long suffering taxpayers would be pounded with brainless excuses for the unending inability to efficiently serve these two tiny islands. 

There would still be critical water shortages, flawed systems and enormous financial waste. 

And I would continue receiving messages about being “in arrears.”