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Letter to the Hon. Minister of Public Utilities
September 27, 2000
Sir,
In this season of top ten lists and hit parades custom-designed for the hustings, I hope you find the following a useful addition to your illustrious list of achievements.
I bring to your attention a noteworthy achievement of the Water and Sewerage Authority, one of the showpieces of your stewardship with its "Water for All by 2000" programme.
This is the case of a household of three domestic consumers located in the vicinity of the University campus. Three women, two aged over 80 and the other over 60 with a replacement hip.
These three WASA consumers are better than average, I suppose. They pay their annual water bills, in advance. Age forces this habit as they prefer not to have to make the trek to the payment counter more than once per year.
This year, 2000 (significant as it is for WASA) was no exception. The annual bill was paid in January.
However, one week ago, without notice, warning or otherwise, they discovered that their supply was cut off.
On enquiry, WASA calmly informed these consumers whose account is in credit by their deliberate choice that they were in arrears. So much for WASA's improved accounting services and customer focus. This travesty speaks volumes about the success of the update of WASA's customer database and accounting systems courtesy Severn Trent (in local or foreign incarnation) recipients of both a management and special contract to update the database.
Well having finally accepted the fact that their account information is wrong, a WASA employee coolly invites these three elderly women 5 days after their supply is wrongfully turned off that they should await his telephone call.
The complaints people at the Ministry last week Thursday offered a truck-borne water supply which has failed to materialise just like the customer-relations man promised telephone call.
So 6 days later, these women are left without a supply, the result of WASA's inefficiency (except when it came to locking off the water) and it as if these consumers who pay in advance are only entitled to abject and scandalous neglect.
So, Mr. Minister, please don't forget to mention this little story of the "success" of your water programme. Perhaps, you can mention how much the Severn Trent boys collected for an apparently still inefficient accounting and billing system (I'm sure that these three women are not the only WASA customers affected). You may also want to mention how much is paid to contractors to carry out such efficient disconnections but who can't reverse the process up to 6 days later when an error is clearly seen.
Mr. Minister, as an anecdote let me add, just for the record two other quick ones you may choose to use on the platform.
Earlier in the year, I happened to be at home one morning when I saw a vanload of men with blue safety hats outside my front wall. No WASA van. Having observed them offloading tools I rushed inside put on a tee shirt and by the time I reached my gate they had already started digging a huge hole.
"No, it ent have no more problem since they fix over the leak", I told them, a leak having been repaired for the second time some weeks earlier. "Well we just come to put in a valve", the one who appeared to be in charge informed me.
Well I was advised by WASA. So I said, having suspected what their real mission was, "I don't have arrears. My rates are paid with my mortgage".
On inspecting their jobsheet, I observed that the address they had was three streets away from mine.
Lucky me, I guess. If I wasn't home that morning and minding my business, disconnection for me.
Next, my sister's home in Tunapuna a few weeks ago. A crew turns up on the street. Again no WASA van. They fix a leak some houses away and install the dreaded cut off valve outside her house. No notification, no warning.
They also somehow turn off her supply. Merrily using her water supply from the tank, to her horror she discovers some time later her supply is non-existent and her pump burns in the bargain.
Well, Mr. Singh, you think is bad lucky we bad lucky? Are we just exceptional. Or, are wee just a few of the multitude of WASA consumers (most electing silence) who have to face these acts of "efficient" water supply without apology or compensation.
I suppose it's only if you happen to know some engineer or someone in WASA who has some sympathy that you get some kind of assistance or redress. And, those who do must be putting themselves at some risk.
Thank you to the Engineer who assisted these elderly customers.
Mr. Minister something stinks in the water supply and its not a corpse in the reservoir.
We consumers deserve better.
HOMEPAGE
Copyright © Clyde Weatherhead
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