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Speaker:The Honourable Basdeo Panday, Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
Date: April 29, 2000
Occasion: Remarks at the Commisssioning of the new Caroni Water Treatment Plant at Piarco, Trinidad.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
My dear Friends:
I was as impressed, as you evidently were, by the passion and the pride with which my Minister of Public utilities just reported to you on his stewardship, to date, in my Administration�s first term.
I share his pride in the good work that the Ministry of Public Utilities has carried out since 1995.
I also share Minister Singh�s passion in his mission to deliver water for all by the end of this year.
And that�s not because my job will be on the line if the Minister of Public Utilities fails in his stated pledge to deliver water for all by 2000.
I am passionate about the delivery of water to everyone because, as the Minister rightly says "Water is Life".
We must, however, be careful not to confuse "Water is Life" with the well known Latin expression, "Aqua Vitae", which means, literally, "Water of Life" and refers, specifically, to Scotland�s gift to civilisation, Whisky.
We�ve got to be extremely careful about what we say, as you well know.
But Water is, in fact, life.
Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, the fossilised remains of our first humanoid ancestor were found by Ethiopia�s Awash River.
The first civilisations emerged in the third millennium Before Christ, along the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Nile and the Indus.
In the days of the Roman Empire, the Caesars routinely punished errant members of the community by decreeing that no Roman citizen was permitted to provide designated wrongdoers with water, or for that matter, with fire.
These days, that sort of punishment would qualify for judicial review as cruel and unusual punishment.
However, when you are reminded that 5 years before the dawn of the 21st Century, only roughly one in every ten persons in this country was receiving a 24 hour water supply, you would be forgiven for wondering if the other nine out of every ten citizens were deliberately being punished by their rulers.
We�ve come a long way in the past four years, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Not only in delivering clean water to the population.
Take electricity.
4,000 new Street Lights have been installed in the National Street Lighting Programme, with a further 4,000 Street Lights now being installed, to be followed by an additional 4,000 Street Lights, for a total of 12, 000 new Street Lights in far flung communities across Trinidad and Tobago.
Electrical inspections have increased by 50%.
This is proof of the wave of prosperity that is sweeping across Trinidad and Tobago which is reflected in the large increase in the number of new electricity supplies being connected by T&TEC.
After Electricity, take the phone service.
Do you remember the anguished lament of the calypsonian who invented Soca, "Ras Shorty I"?
"You can�t even use the phone to dial a prayer".
That was Shorty�s editorial in song on the state of the telephone service
Now, you have 50 per cent more phone lines now than 5 years ago.
You have an increase of 200 per cent in Cell phones capacity.
Do you remember how often those of you who attempted to call a Cell phone user would hear a recording, "The Cellular user you are calling is out of range�.."
There are over 300 per cent more Cell sites now.
This means that you can now reach out and touch someone whether you receiving or sending a cellular phone call.
That�s not all.
The end of TSTT�s monopoly is imminent.
3 licenses for the operation of cellular services, to compete with TSTT, have been recommended by Price-Waterhouse-Coopers.
This guarantees less expensive telephone services for businessmen and for individual users.
Our target is a phone in every home; Connected to those phones must be a computer, with access to the Internet. That�s why we have made computer loans available to our public servants. And that�s why we have removed the VAT from computers and computer supplies.
Trinidad and Tobago is picking up momentum for the 21st century.
Construction has started on the National Mail Centre at Piarco.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
When have you last bought or even seen an AirMail envelope?
We don�t need them anymore.
Do you know how many years ago we stopped sending or receiving letters by boat, by what used to be called Surface Mail?
Why, then, has the national clearing and sorting centre for mail remained on Wrightson Road, by the Docks, when the mail was coming in by plane at Piarco?
With all of this, ladies and gentlemen, we continue to win water, to purify water, and to deliver water to homes across the length and breadth of Trinidad and Tobago.
A caution is probably due to the Minister of Public Utilities.
What will become of all those trucks now delivering water all over the country at, how much, $60 a tank?
And let me put another question to the Minister, is it true that because of the tremendous improvements at T & TEC and the rural electrification programme, the sale of candles, kerosene lamps and torch lights are down?
Seriously, ladies and gentlemen, Trinidad and Tobago came a long way in the second half of the last decade of the 21st century.
And the best is still to come.
I have no doubt, no doubt, whatsoever, that the sterling performance of the people who worked on this project will continue to the completion of the South Water project.
I congratulate, I thank, every one of the more than 450 workers who have been employed in the construction of the new Caroni Water Treatment Plant, and the additional 550 workers employed in other phases of the South Water Project.
I thank and congratulate every Government Officer who has contributed, and who is contributing, to the realisation of these projects.
I congratulate the Minister of Public Utilities for his leadership of his Ministry�s various projects in water, in electricity, in telephone services and in postal services.
I would, at the same time, counsel that as important as the winning and treating and delivery of clean water, is the need for water conservation.
I therefore challenge WASA to organise an on-going public education programme to encourage its customers to treat water as the valuable, life giving, but limited commodity that it is.
Planet Earth has no more water today than it did 2 million years ago.
Though the gains in the supply of water that we celebrate today are significant, they are likely to be taken for granted.
It would be a pity if that were to happen.
In his 1985 book, "Rivers of Empire", Donald Worster tells us:
"To write history without putting any water in it is to leave out a large part of the story.
"Human experience has not been as dry as that".
We have the obligation to provide water not only to every household, but also to the dozens of new schools that we�re constructing, to the new Police Stations, and to the new Health Centres, and to the new LNG and Methanol and Ammonia Plants that are coming on stream; to the new airport; to the new homes that are being built across Trinidad and Tobago; to every building, every home, every faucet, everywhere, water must flow, 24 hours a day.
That is my mandate to the Ministry of Public Utilities, Ladies and Gentlemen.
That, I see to be my Government�s obligation to the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
Today, here at Caroni, where the Ganges meets the Nile, as David Rudder might have been suggesting to us, we take a giant step in delivering water for all in the land where, I have pledged, there shall be opportunity for all.
My dear friends, my brothers and sisters:
When we unite as a people, we win, everyone wins.
Let us all be winners.
Let us build one another, together.
Thank you.
God bless you.
God bless you all.