$2 million tank farms launched as govt cracks down on water truck abuse

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has is­sued a warn­ing that mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion in wa­ter truck­ing will no longer be tol­er­at­ed, as the Gov­ern­ment rolled out four wa­ter truck­ing tank farms across South Trinidad to bring re­lief to res­i­dents dur­ing the dry sea­son.

The fa­cil­i­ties, es­tab­lished at a cost of just over $2 mil­lion, were launched in the con­stituen­cy of Siparia, which Padarath said WASA da­ta shows is the most un­der­served area in the coun­try. The ini­tia­tive fol­lows protests by res­i­dents in parts of South Trinidad over pro­longed wa­ter short­ages.

“This ad­min­is­tra­tion will not tol­er­ate the kind of mis­man­age­ment that has plagued wa­ter truck­ing in the past,” Padarath said. “That is why these tank farms are be­ing rolled out with strict checks and bal­ances, digi­ti­sa­tion and di­rect min­is­te­r­i­al over­sight.”

Each of the four tank farms has a stor­age ca­pac­i­ty of 20,000 gal­lons and will serve as a cen­tralised hub for truck-borne wa­ter, re­duc­ing re­liance on long-dis­tance truck­ing and en­sur­ing faster re­sponse times to com­mu­ni­ties that rou­tine­ly go with­out pipe-borne sup­ply for nine to 15 days, and in some cas­es up to a month.

Padarath said the pro­gramme is a short- to medi­um-term mea­sure to pro­vide im­me­di­ate re­lief, par­tic­u­lar­ly in south­ern, cen­tral and east­ern Trinidad, where age­ing WASA in­fra­struc­ture has failed to keep pace with de­mand.

A key fea­ture of the ini­tia­tive is a digi­tised op­er­at­ing sys­tem to mon­i­tor the open­ing and clos­ing of valves, pre­vent­ing in­di­vid­ual con­trol and re­duc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for abuse. The min­is­ter said this will be backed by per­son­nel on the ground, week­ly re­port­ing re­quire­ments and se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems, in­clud­ing cam­eras, to safe­guard the wa­ter sup­ply.

“We are us­ing tech­nol­o­gy, but we are not de­pend­ing on tech­nol­o­gy alone,” Padarath said. “There will be hu­man over­sight, spot checks and week­ly re­ports so we know ex­act­ly where the wa­ter is go­ing and who is ben­e­fit­ing.”

As part of the crack­down on ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, Padarath al­so an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of a new hot­line at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, sep­a­rate from WASA, where cit­i­zens can re­port prob­lems with wa­ter sched­ules and truck-borne de­liv­er­ies.

“The min­istry will now hold WASA ac­count­able,” he said. “If wa­ter sched­ules are not met, we will find out why. We can­not sep­a­rate our­selves from the state en­ter­pris­es un­der our purview and then ex­pect cit­i­zens to suf­fer in si­lence.”

Chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Gow­tam Ma­haraj, said the tank farms will bring much-need­ed re­lief to com­mu­ni­ties where res­i­dents of­ten strug­gle to get even a drop of wa­ter for cook­ing.

“This will serve ar­eas like Pla­tonique, Rochard Road, Ram­s­ing Trace, Ramsabag Trace, Mar­ble Trace, parts of Old Clarke Road and sev­er­al high-point com­mu­ni­ties where pipe-borne wa­ter does not reach,” Ma­haraj said. “A lot of peo­ple are go­ing to ben­e­fit. This is a very joy­ful mo­ment.”

Padarath said the Siparia roll­out is the first phase of a wider pro­gramme, with sim­i­lar tank farms planned for Moru­ga/Table­land, Ma­yaro and oth­er rur­al con­stituen­cies. He al­so con­firmed that Cab­i­net is ex­pect­ed to con­sid­er the con­struc­tion of three new de­sali­na­tion plants as part of a longer-term so­lu­tion to the coun­try’s wa­ter cri­sis.

“For now,” the min­is­ter said, “the mes­sage is clear: re­lief is com­ing for south Trinidad, and mis­man­age­ment in wa­ter truck­ing will no longer be ac­cept­ed.”