Dear Editor, There appeared in your Monday 24th June 2024 issue of the Cook Islands News a letter from an anonymous writer asking a number of questions.

The letter asks for an explanation as to the 30 or so vehicles in TTV’s fleet and why there are only half a dozen left at the offices of TTV and the rest are taken home in the evenings and on the weekends.

Also read: Letter: To Tatou Vai concerns

TTV has 30 vehicles? It doesn’t. It has 19. Two of those are sucker trucks.

The second comment presumes if in the evenings vehicles are not at TTV then they must be at employee’s homes. That presumption is incorrect. Water reticulation, like power supply, is not an 8 to 4 business. Vehicles are out on the field at all hours. So the general presumption “not at the office must be at someone’s private home” is incorrect.

The average cost of fuel per month is $8800. It must be kept in mind there are 11 intakes, most of them quite remote and accessed only by, in most part, unformed roads. Many of these vehicles do at least 100km per day per vehicle accessing the intakes at least twice a day, up to four times some days to fill up the reservoirs.

TTV has 32 employees. Yes, we recently advertised for replacement staff.  We now know that the number of employees is modest when compared to other utilities in the Pacific region.

Apii Timoti

CEO of TTV