KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged wa­ter truck­ing rack­et at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion (Fi­nan­cial Year 2027) Bill, 2026 in Par­lia­ment on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Gon­za­les claimed some em­ploy­ees were de­lib­er­ate­ly de­priv­ing com­mu­ni­ties of pipeborne wa­ter to gen­er­ate busi­ness for wa­ter truck con­trac­tors.

Gon­za­les said, “I am call­ing for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly that wa­ter truck­ing is­sue, be­cause it is bleed­ing mon­ey from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, and many fam­i­lies are be­ing im­pact­ed ad­verse­ly by what is tak­ing place… If it goes un­su­per­vised, there are those in­side of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, they do not ben­e­fit and they do not wish for peo­ple to have a re­li­able sup­ply of wa­ter. Be­cause if they do so, they will have to pack up their trucks and they will not make a cent. But turn off valves, de­prive the peo­ple of wa­ter and force them to re­quest wa­ter trucks and some­body is mak­ing mon­ey and mak­ing a mint.”

This isn’t the first time Gon­za­les has raised such con­cerns.

Dur­ing his tenure as line min­is­ter for WASA, he ex­posed an al­leged mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar wa­ter truck­ing rack­et in Morne Di­a­blo, where more than 5,000 res­i­dents were re­port­ed­ly forced to pur­chase wa­ter af­ter pri­vate op­er­a­tors al­leged­ly in­ter­fered with WASA’s sup­ply.

On Sat­ur­day, Gon­za­les al­so ques­tioned an al­most $30 mil­lion in­crease in WASA’s al­lo­ca­tion for wa­ter truck­ing ser­vices and raised con­cerns about con­trac­tors al­leged­ly be­ing paid twice to trans­port wa­ter through some of the au­thor­i­ty’s tank farms.

He said, “When I look at the al­lo­ca­tion for wa­ter trucks, it moved from 2026 es­ti­mates of $52.9 mil­lion to $82.7 mil­lion an in­crease by $30 mil­lion. If you want to know how WASA per­form­ing, this is some­thing that you have to look at. Be­cause the more peo­ple that are de­pend­ing on wa­ter truck­ing ser­vices, it means that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty is not do­ing its work to pro­vide pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Gon­za­les said he had wel­comed cur­rent Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath’s ear­li­er com­mit­ment to stamp out the wa­ter truck­ing rack­et be­cause he had en­coun­tered sim­i­lar prac­tices dur­ing his tenure, but raised red flags over the tank farms al­leged­ly not be­ing con­nect­ed to the wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. In­stead, he claimed, con­trac­tors were be­ing paid to trans­port wa­ter to the tank farms and then re­ceiv­ing a sec­ond pay­ment to de­liv­er the same wa­ter to house­holds.

“So the con­trac­tor takes the wa­ter, de­liv­ers it to the tank farm, he’s paid $1,200 for that trip. And when the tank farm is filled, the same con­trac­tor is tak­ing wa­ter from the same tank farm and is be­ing paid an­oth­er $1,200. Rack­e­teer­ing,” Gon­za­les said.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Clyde El­der re­ject­ed Gon­za­les’ crit­i­cism of the in­creased wa­ter truck­ing al­lo­ca­tion, claim­ing that the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion had left WASA with a huge wa­ter truck­ing bill.

El­der said, “What he didn’t tell us is that he left WASA with a $78 mil­lion bill that we have to now pay for wa­ter truck­ing. And for one of his favourite con­trac­tors, too… What he will not al­so say is that ar­eas such as Pe­nal, Debe, Ma­yaro, Princes Town, Bar­rack­pore, WASA tells us that for all of the years they have been in pow­er, they de­lib­er­ate­ly did not serve these ar­eas with ad­e­quate sup­ply of wa­ter. And what we have done now is that we have in­creased that al­lo­ca­tion to en­sure that these com­mu­ni­ties get wa­ter.”

He ar­gued that the high­er al­lo­ca­tion was in­tend­ed to ad­dress long­stand­ing wa­ter short­ages rather than be­ing an in­di­ca­tion of WASA’s poor per­for­mance.

El­der al­so turned Gon­za­les’ call for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion back on the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, rais­ing ques­tions about an al­leged $15 mil­lion con­tract award­ed by WASA to a cam­paign man­ag­er short­ly be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion.

El­der added, “I want to call for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a sole-se­lect con­tract for $15 mil­lion award­ed to a cer­tain cam­paign man­ag­er weeks lead­ing to the elec­tion. Fif­teen mil­lion, sole-se­lect, you know, sole-se­lect. He don’t want a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to that. I think we should in­ves­ti­gate that.”

The min­is­ter al­so crit­i­cised the Op­po­si­tion’s con­tri­bu­tions to the bud­get de­bate, ac­cus­ing PNM MPs of fail­ing to present mean­ing­ful pro­pos­als to ad­dress the coun­try’s chal­lenges.

“They had no ideas. They had no plan. They had no re­tort. They had no analy­sis. They had no pro­jec­tions. They had no de­vel­op­men­tal so­lu­tions to of­fer,” El­der said.

He claimed Op­po­si­tion mem­bers were more in­ter­est­ed in at­tack­ing the Gov­ern­ment and re­turn­ing to pow­er than pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day for a re­sponse to Gon­za­les’ al­le­ga­tions about the wa­ter truck­ing rack­et and the al­leged dou­ble pay­ments to con­trac­tors sup­ply­ing WASA’s tank farms.

How­ev­er, no re­sponse was re­ceived up to press time.