Tyrico Water-Works – a Case of Government Abandonment, Apathy, Lies and Mismanagement

[Nizam Mohamed]

Nizam Mohamed 374-8354 nizam_mo...@yahoo.com
Water Reserve Road,

La Fillette Village, via Blanchisseuse,

PO Box 3805, Upper Santa Cruz.

December 25th, 2025

The Honourable Barry Padarath

The Minister of Public Utilities

One Alexandra Place

1 Alexandra Street

Newtown, St. Clair. 628-9500

 

Dear Honourable Minister Padarath,

 

Tyrico Water-Works – a Case of Government Abandonment, Apathy, Lies and Mismanagement

“To provide an adequate, reliable, potable supply of water” – this is WASA’s mission statement. On the North Coast – with artesian wells overflowing down mountains, with rivers flowing everywhere, with springs and waterfalls cascading over every other valley – WASA has shamelessly failed to fulfil this mission statement. No household, no customer on the North Coast should be without an adequate supply of pipe-borne water.

As a retiree who worked thirty years for WASA, who worked ten years at Tyrico Water-Works and as a concerned citizen, I humbly request that you ensure that Tyrico Water-Works is upgraded, developed and secured.   Additionally, I request that the same be done to every Water-Works station and to every WASA installation and facility on the North Coast: Las Cuevas, La Fillette and Blanchisseuse.

Moreover, the same water supply system that improved the supply to La Fillette Village should be implemented to improve the water supplies of Maracas Bay, Las Cuevas and Blanchisseuse. That is, the use of other river-water sources. I especially refer to the use of Marianne River to enlarge and improve Blanchisseuse’s water supply.

What happened to Tyrico Water-Works – its pole-gate stolen, its entry road potholed, muddy, and narrow, its compound bushy and unkempt, squatters’ eyesores everywhere – is a metaphor for what happened to the North Coast water supply under successive governments, but especially under the PNM. It deteriorated into inadequacy, unreliability and dereliction – as did every element of North Coast society. Please see attached pictures of its present state (labelled Nizam 1.) In depressing irony, there were once “No Trespassing” signs in front of the squatters’ slum that sides the entry road. Please see attached pictures of these signs: pictures that show the squatters houses and shacks behind the signs (labelled Nizam 2.) With no WASA official to stop them, the squatters simply ignored these signs and built at will.  

Tyrico Water Works is the station that supplies pipe borne water to Maracas Bay. I worked there for ten years – from 1987 to 1997. During that period, I used my influence to have the station upgraded and developed. A pole-gate with a lock was installed, the compound’s perimeter fence was erected and repaired – similarly the immediate gate; the toilet and bathroom were upgraded and reactivated (they were not operational;) and the entire building that housed the Water-Works Operators was upgraded and refurbished. There was an office with a desk and a telephone. At present, I am unaware of the reason the Operators no longer have an office there. It has now regressed into its derelict, unsightly, unsecured state: a state unworthy of any WASA compound. However, was it only the government that caused this disintegration? I strongly believe that the government needs to inquire how much WASA’s managers and workers caused or contributed to this decay. Direct, intimate experience leaves me with no doubt that they are all to blame: the line minister, the WASA Board, WASA executives, but more than anyone else, it is the immediate supervisors and first responders – the Process Plant Operators (PPOs) – who are most culpable.

The Process Plant Operators (PPOs) and Field Supervisors

They – the PPOs – should ensure that every aspect of WASA’s installations is maintained, but they do not. They are like glorified watchmen, joy-riding up and down the North Coast, some socializing and drinking, some gambling with villagers. Honourable Minister, you should identify the culpable Operators and discipline/dismiss them. The PPOs work and wallow in this dereliction every day, while the supervisors visit regularly. They are obligated to report and address such neglect – if only to ensure that they work in secure, healthy, aesthetically pleasing environments. Of course, they forever fail to make these reports. The overall reason is simple: they want to be left alone to indulge in all manner of illegal and immoral behaviour. While stationed there, I was compelled to work with such Operators. SOME USED THE WASA VEHICLE TO TRANSPORT MARIJUANA WHILE ANOTHER USED THE WASA VEHICLE AND OTHER RESOURCES TO FACILITATE THE BUGGERING OF UNDERAGE BOYS. The attached newspaper reports document their arrest and/or conviction. These reports are attached as Nizam 3. I complained dutifully and consistently about these Operators. The Operators who were arrested/convicted – Cyril Stenson, Terry Alexis and Michael Baal – were completely unconcerned about their duties or about the state of their environment, as were almost all my other co-workers. Paradoxically, they were interested only in liming, cooking and smoking marijuana with villagers who they invited to the station. Similarly, Michael Baal was only interested in inviting teenaged boys to the compound. Shockingly, some of these operators, Terrence Yip Ying especially, welcomed any squatters within the compound – once attractive women were included. I resisted both my corrupt co-workers and the prospective squatters. WHILE I WAS STATIONED THERE, NOT ONE PERSON SQUATTED. The station remained clean, secured and professional. The laissez-faire, apathetic, corrupt attitude of the PP Operators – this is the main reason the station became a derelict, squatters’ paradise. Honourable Minister, you should investigate and discipline/dismiss the present PPOs who engage in this illegal, irregular behaviour – all during working hours: smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, gambling and, inter alia, sexual activity. To be sure, though, it was not only the Operators, but also the supervisors who contributed to Tyrico Water-Works deteriorating into a semi-abandoned slum.

The Supervisors

In my time, the Supervisors – similar to the Operators – were not concerned about the security, professionalism or the cleanliness of the Water-Works Stations on the North Coast. The job specifications of the PPOs and the Supervisors should be amended to include the duty to ensure that all WASA installations/compounds under their care be properly maintained. Allow me to describe one incident that can be interpreted as a metaphor for the attitude of these supervisors. A supervisor once parked his vehicle on the Paria Main Road – because the pole gate that secured the entry road was locked – walked up to the station’s office and tried to browbeat me, threatening to issue me a warning letter. I calmly told him that WASA had no security personnel attached to the station and that the pole gate was locked in order to prevent trespassers from squatting, stealing or vandalizing. Nevertheless, he issued me a warning letter. A few days later, at the meeting with the Union, he was forced to withdraw the warning letter and expunge it from my file. He was told that he should have a key for the lock, that he should not endanger the security and safety of the station or the Operator simply because he wanted to drive straight into the station. Many of the supervisors were former Operators who were promoted through a process of inertia or obsequiousness. The Operators and the Supervisors operated in this way because they were not compelled by any executive to function according to both their job specification or their conscience. They indulge in every lazy impulse and wait for a whip of some kind of authority to crack, but none does.  

A major reason why these PPOs and Supervisors behave in this manner is that the area is both rural and remote. The stations are not monitored. The easiest and most obvious solution to this problem is to install CCTV cameras.

Operations’ Executives

These are mainly young, UWI graduates in Engineering who have little or no managerial experience or life experience. They should be compelled to attend classes in management and leadership. They fall into and follow the same laissez-faire, colonial-minded culture of the PPOs and the supervisors. A crucial difference is that they are university graduates and should consequently operate in a more competent and professional manner. Personal experience taught me that, under the naïve, uninformed belief that hollow popularity may lead to some kind of bond, many are too eager to socialize with their subordinates, to be “one of the boys.” This attitude leads to inefficiency and failure.  They do not see the wisdom of maintaining a distanced, professional relationship. Usually, the Operators and Supervisors draw them into counterproductive, informal social relations.  One such executive who epitomized this polluted outlook was Geraldine Houlder. Although WASA considered her an engineer, she possessed land surveying qualifications – in the UWI, the land surveying department falls under the Faculty of Engineering. She drank beers, smoked cigarettes on the job and not only negatively socialized with her subordinates, but also with villagers.

The Board of Commissioners

I am not suggesting that the Board micro-manages WASA, but in the circumstances I describe within, I suggest that it implements a regulatory system through which it can regularly monitor the operations on the North Coast. The Board seems unaware of what happens on the field. In fact, the Board became aware and acted only when I wrote a letter and submitted pictures of the sub-standard, unsanitary, unhealthy conditions under which we were forced to work at Tyrico Water-Works. The core activity of WASA – winning, treating and distributing water, repairing leaks and turning valves, replacing mains and pumps – is done by non-academic, working-class MEN on the field. Their work stations should be clean, comfortable, safe and aesthetically pleasing – in a word, motivational.

The Problem of Government: False Promises, Victimization and Abandonment

The following is an example of how, notwithstanding the ready availability of water sources, finance and all other resources, an apathetic government can allow a water supply to deteriorate. In 2006, the PNM was the political party in power. In that year, WASA delivered to the villagers of La Fillette a communique promising a well by 2006 and a water treatment plant by 2008 (please see attached copy labelled Nizam 4.) The well was indeed operationalized in 2006, but collapsed within months. At present, in its abandoned state, it is rusty, overgrown with bush and weeds and has been vandalized. Everything worth anything has been stolen from its site (please see attached picture, labelled Nizam 5.) It is incredible that WASA not only failed to repair this well, but also allowed it to be vandalized.

Further, WASA advertised in the newspapers for contractors to bid for the construction of a water treatment plant on the banks of the Yaara River (please see copy of newspaper advertisement, labelled Nizam 6.) This seems to have been a futile exercise in public relations. No work was ever done and no water treatment plant was built at that time.

However, in 2010, with the change in government, with Ganga Singh as WASA’s new CEO, the plant was built and operationalized. I met with him to discuss the construction of this water treatment plant. I brought with me the relevant documents listed above. I was still under suspension from WASA – I was suspended from June 06^th, 2007. Although Ganga Singh threatened to “put me to the test” and would later try to dismiss me, nevertheless he built a water treatment plant using its source of raw water as Yaara River. The village of La Fillette now has the most reliable and adequate supply of water than any village on the North Coast.

Furthermore, to illustrate the posturing incompetence and ineffectiveness of government, we must also examine decline of La Fillette’s water supply under Penelope Beckles, when she was Minister of Public Utilities. In 2007, she was the line minister as well as the MP with jurisdiction over La Fillete. Circa 1999, the Basdeo Panday government provided the village of La Fillette with a pipe-borne water supply for the first time in its history. By 2007, that supply had declined into inadequacy and unreliability. On or around May 24^th, 2007, Minister Beckles organized a meeting with T&TEC officials, WASA officials and La Fillette villagers. The topic was the inadequacy of the electricity and water supplies. I attended the meeting as a villager. The WASA officials present were engineers Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Gurusaransingh. I first refrained from speaking because I was under warnings from WASA. However, when I realized the obscenely false excuses that were being vomited by the WASA officials on the reason for the deteriorating water supply, I stood and dismissed all their condescendingly articulated reasons. Essentially, I explained that WASA had all the resources – all that was required was the will and the competence. All this I eventually also explained to Ganga Singh four years later.

Three weeks later – by letter dated June 6^th, 2007 – I was suspended from WASA.

This unfair suspension lasted four and a half years. I met with Minister Beckles and pleaded for help. I was brought before a tribunal and thought I would be fired. She agreed to help but did nothing. I eventually contacted an old attorney friend, Devesh Maharaj, who agreed to file a Legal Claim against the PSA: the PSA had refused to represent me, thereby allowing WASA to victimize me. Minister and MP, the Honourable Ms. Beckles, lacked the competence to improve or even maintain the water supply and lacked the will and integrity to stop WASA from victimizing me. She seemed unable or unwilling to wield the considerable power she possessed as a minister of government,

 

My Humble Recommendations:

1. The office that once housed the PPOs should be operationalized and outfitted – especially with the relevant effective communication. The North Coast PPOs should monitor and manage the area’s water supply from this office.
2. The pole gate needs to be re-installed and locked and the squatting must be regulated.

a.       The squatters should be given notice to relocate.

b.      When I worked there, I allowed no one to claim land or to squat. Where there is now an ugly slum of squatter’s shacks, in my time there was nothing but bush. Several people approached me, claiming to own land within the area of the pole gate: an area that could only be accessed by WASA’s private road. One of them threatened to kill me when I referred him to Head Office. I eventually wrote to CEO Errol Grimes, requesting that he clarify the controversy. I was informed that WASA acquired the land though normal legal channels and that no one had any rights to any land there.

3. The access road off Paria Main Road (North Coast Road) needs to be properly drained, repaired and repaved.
4. The station’s immediate compound should be fenced, secured and its main gate strengthened, reinforced and locked.
5. The road and path to the intake should be cleared, cleaned and developed, therefore making it easily accessible.
6. The intake itself needs to be widened, deepened and daily cleaned – WASA pays intake caretakers for such functions.
7. The trash racks that filter all kinds of debris to the intake should be maintained and improved.
8. The entire workforce present when this area disintegrated should be replaced and the human resource hierarchy that facilitated them overhauled. That is, from the manager(s) to the supervisors to the PPOs.

 

To conclude: I strongly believe that you should personally visit these North Coast Water-Works stations and installations – do not accept the false assurances of WASA executives. Only then will you realize the reprehensible reality of the dereliction and decay. Maracas Bay is our premier tourist destination site, yet its water supply is inadequate and unreliable, its Water-Works station, Tyrico Water-Works, is unsecured, unsightly and undeveloped. Similarly, Las Cuevas Beach was once a Blue Flag Beach – I am unsure if it still is, yet its water supply is inadequate and unreliable. So too is the supply of the entire village and the adjacent Rincon area. Blanchisseuse, one of the most popular and developed villages on the North Coast, is similarly affected. As a tourist destination site and with tourism dollars in mind, the entire North Coast should be the focus of rapid, intense development, with a reliable water supply as its foundation.

However, with a billion tax-dollar budget, with a huge, sedentary workforce that is paid with equally huge, unmatched salaries, WASA has failed to fulfil its mission on the North Coast.

Some management guru, some organizational developer or institutional strengthener may use ostentatious jargon to explain the horrible decay that happened here, but the explanation is simpler: no one cared and no one cares – not the PPOs, not the supervisors, not the managers, the directors, the CEO, not the Board – no one. Their conscience is not their guide; their comparatively huge salaries are no motivation to concern or competence. This is the stark reality of this decay However, it would still be interesting to know if the deterioration of the North Coast’s water supply is directly proportional, or proportional in any way, to the disintegration of the Water-Works Stations and other WASA installations. It is stunningly incredible that this water supply and these WASA installations were allowed to so quickly and completely deteriorate into inadequacy and dilapidation. You can blame the PNM, but the obvious fact remains that the same PPOs, the same supervisors, the same managers and other executives that were present then – when everything was deteriorating – are still present. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” but for years there was no will here – the only way was down into decay and dereliction. The development and improvement of the entire North Coast’s water supply is simply a matter of will. It may seem complex or difficult, but it is not.  

Thank you very much. I look forward to your response.       

Yours Respectfully,

 

Nizam Mohamed, Dip. (PR), AA (IR), BA (English), PG Dip (Pub. Admin.), MA (Mass Comm.)

Cc: The Prime Minister, The Minister of Labour, The Minister of Finance, the Regulated Industries Commission, the Board, the CEO, the Public Utilities Commission, The Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA), other regional and international water organizations and associations, all news media organizations.

Postscript: other than the colour pictures to the Minister, all other attached copies of pictures will be in black and white. I am struggling financially and do not have the funds to afford many things – including colour pictures.