Saturday, March 21, 2009

The Government should give WASCO the chance it deserves

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it a little disingenuous to suggest that all of WASCO's problems are due to political interference.

March 21, 2009 at 11:13 AM
Anonymous said...

The writer is completely incorrect. The problem we have faced is a lack of political WILL to allow WASCO to be profitable. I remember when rates were increased by 100% consumers, particularly in the hotel sector, were complaining. Even that increase was not enough. It costs A LOT of mney to operate WASCO because it depends largely on pumps which require electricity. We also have had a country developed haphazardly for years and so the water infrastructure was never properly planned viz-a-vis general development. I do agree that I believe we HAVE the technical and management ability in St. Lucia to turn WASCO around but its not going to come cheap. As a start I say double the base rate immediately and allow the company to make a profit so that it can reinvest in capacity, distribution, advanced metering, GIS, network planning and water conservation measures. That said, I believe privatisation is inevitable, the question is how it wil be owned. I just hope most of the profits stay at home.

BOTTOM LINE: lets pay at least 1.5 cent per gallon for the first 2000 gals and 2 cents for every 1000 after that. The average family of 3persons uses around 2700 gal/month so a rough price will be about $44The basic water rate will work out to be $30.

March 27, 2009 at 3:15 PM

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