Water more than flour!

The Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) is the worst public utility in Trinidad and Tobago. That is precisely why I wonder how public servants could elect a man from WASA to head their trade union. Tells us something about public servants doesn't it? When he settles for one percent or something close to that they get vex.

On Thursday, June 9, 2011 every one I met in the street went on and on about the brown water in the taps. Water did not get brown when Horace GRIMES became CEO of WASA, it became browner.

But now he is gone. The new CEO, appointed when the People's Partnership came into power, is a former public utilities minister Ganga Singh. I don't know if anyone remembers that when Ganga was minister he promised water for all by 2000. Nor do I know if you would remember that as Minister Ganga shared a platform with Kamla Persad-Bissessar in her Siparia constituency and they got carried away about who could lay more pipe. It is obvious therefore that Kamla was satisfied with Ganga's pipe-laying promise and performance for her to name him WASA CEO when she became Prime Minister in 2010.

The story I want to tell involves a broken sewer main in the middle of an intersection in my street i.e Torrance and Moody Stuart streets. I first called WASA on March 10 to report the leak. I did not give my phone number so I assume that their system captured it because they once called to get directions. That intersection is extremely busy since the first part of the street is a no entry. There is a Roman Catholic Church and school on my street. I pleaded with WASA to repair the leak before the Easter weekend and then I pleaded with them to repair the leak before school reopened. I have had to witness a parishioner going to Easter vigil get splashed with sewer water and school boys, being boys, kicking the water on each other in the afternoon.
On April 22, WASA finally sent a crew to "examine" the leak. Maybe the leak passed the test because nothing happened. I kept calling every single day. Sometimes I waited on the line for 10 minutes before it timed out and disconnected the call.

Well the news is that on June 1 when I reached home in the afternoon there was a huge pile of dirt in the middle of the intersection, three pieces of stick planted in the dirt and some tape tied around the stick. Heavy rainfall threw down the stick, cars began to pass on the dirt, the leak became worse and the minor water main leak began flooding the street. Great work don't you think? Take the prize WASA!

I couldn't stop calling. My final call was on Thursday June 9. The conversation was as follows:
WASA: (Pleasantries etc) Theron speaking
ME: Good Day Terrance
WASA: No it is Theron
ME: Sorry Theron. Your recording says my call may be recorded for quality of service. I want you to record my call because I want quality service. I am calling from (and a summary of my efforts since March 10). Theron tried to ask me for my phone number so he could pull up the report (s)
ME: (continuing) No let me finish this because I am only going to say it once. If I come home on Monday and this leak is not fixed I am going to walk around San Fernando with a baseball bat and anytime I see a WASA vehicle taking children to school, or taking women to the grocery or parked in front of a rum shop I will smash the windscreen
I hang up.

Lo and behold on Friday morning three huge trucks with plenty workers drive up. So am I happy? Well when I return in the evening having gone with my friends to Maracas Bay: SAME OLD STORY. Not even a sign of work and residents were willing to tell me that the men were there all morning.

So this week it is me and my baseball bat.
Because I can't find my Member of Parliament Patrick Manning. There is sewage leaking on my street while he walks from Port of Spain making a pappyshow of himself. For months he sat in the parliament, DUMB, never opened his mouth and when he finally did he talked nonsense about the Prime Minister's $150 million and where she got the money to build it. Well no wonder he got suspended from the parliament. And his few supporters have the nerve to put tape on their mouths (in a protest) and carry placards saying "Give us back our voice".
In 40 years, Manning has never represented me. On the contrary I have been doing his work and that of every PNM councillor while his supporters have been acquiring CEPEP contracts and sitting on state boards.

Before the 2007 general elections his (and Junior Regrello's) thousands of San Fernando supporters passed on Coffee Street with cocoyea brooms (made from dried coconut palm leaves) chanting "It is sweeping time". Now that the PNM has been swept from power he could not muster 200 supporters to walk with him.
Well this is his opportunity to work for his constituents. I wish he would call up Ganga Singh and talk pipe.
Now does anyone remember what his comments were when (as Prime Minister) he returned from having heart surgery in Cuba? "The boy wukking. Ask Hazel" and he turns to his wife.
Well start wukking boy, start wukking.