Padarath promises action on WASA security arrears

KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has promised to work with pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies to set­tle out­stand­ing pay­ments owed by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), ac­knowl­edg­ing that some firms went three to four years with­out be­ing paid.

Speak­ing dur­ing Wednes­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment, Padarath said 14 com­pa­nies pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices at WASA fa­cil­i­ties and that $50.53 mil­lion was paid to them be­tween May 2025 and Oc­to­ber 15, 2026.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that the pay­ments had not cleared the back­log, with some com­pa­nies still owed mon­ey dat­ing back sev­er­al years.

Padarath was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young about an es­ti­mat­ed $75 mil­lion owed to pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies and con­cerns raised by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty As­so­ci­a­tion (TP­SA).

Young asked whether an ad­di­tion­al $8.96 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to WASA would help ad­dress the ar­rears.

Padarath said the in­crease would help al­le­vi­ate the prob­lem but ac­knowl­edged that fur­ther fund­ing might be need­ed as pay­ments to se­cu­ri­ty providers con­tin­ued.

“The man­date has been to bring all par­ties to the ta­ble, bring a speedy res­o­lu­tion, and see how we can pay some of these lega­cy debts that was left over the last three to four years,” Padarath said.

The is­sue came af­ter the TP­SA raised con­cerns last week about out­stand­ing pay­ments, with spokesper­son Raquel-Ann Uzoe­me­ka say­ing some WASA sites had been left with­out guards on Fri­day.

Uzoe­me­ka said most sites re­mained manned, but some com­pa­nies had in­formed WASA se­cu­ri­ty that of­fi­cers had not re­port­ed for du­ty at cer­tain lo­ca­tions. She said mem­ber com­pa­nies had not in­struct­ed work­ers to stand down and es­ti­mat­ed that about 250 of­fi­cers across 13 firms were af­fect­ed by the non-pay­ment.

The as­so­ci­a­tion had giv­en WASA’s lead­er­ship un­til 4 pm last Fri­day to re­spond to cor­re­spon­dence seek­ing set­tle­ment of a sub­stan­tial part of the ar­rears, with its ex­ec­u­tive ex­pect­ed to meet to de­cide on its next step if no re­sponse came.

Padarath had re­ject­ed the dead­line as un­rea­son­able, say­ing the au­thor­i­ty had to fol­low the Fi­nance Min­istry’s process­es to iden­ti­fy fund­ing for the out­stand­ing bills. He al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing of the ul­ti­ma­tum dur­ing the bud­get cy­cle and called for di­a­logue.

Padarath chal­lenged the claim that WASA fa­cil­i­ties had been left un­manned, say­ing it was un­true and that con­tin­gency plans were in place.

He said WASA’s ap­proach was to bring the par­ties to­geth­er and re­solve the mat­ter, warn­ing that break­downs in com­mu­ni­ca­tion could cre­ate fur­ther prob­lems.

Padarath said the bills had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over sev­er­al years and blamed the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for al­low­ing the ar­rears to build up. He said the Gov­ern­ment could not clear all out­stand­ing bills dat­ing back to 2016 in one fis­cal year, giv­en the bil­lions owed to oth­er cred­i­tors, in­clud­ing elec­tric­i­ty and tele­phone providers and con­trac­tors.

He said WASA would use fund­ing iden­ti­fied through the Fi­nance Min­istry to clear some of the back­log while main­tain­ing a work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies.

Young wel­comed Padarath’s re­sponse dur­ing the com­mit­tee, thank­ing him for what he de­scribed as a ma­ture ap­proach to the is­sue.