DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

With non-func­tion­ing street­lights and wa­ter prob­lems ex­ac­er­bat­ed by an ex­treme­ly dry rainy sea­son, res­i­dents of Layan Hill, Bel­mont, say they are frus­trat­ed with the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. Yes­ter­day, some of them spoke to Guardian Me­dia about prob­lems they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing for years.

“My first child is about 45 and since I make him I tot­ing wa­ter,” said Chris­tine Mark who com­plained that the sit­u­a­tion makes wash­ing, cook­ing, and clean­ing im­pos­si­ble.

Her hus­band, Earl, said he has ex­pe­ri­enced wa­ter prob­lems for the 71 years he has lived in the area, said is tired of emp­ty promis­es.

“We had a protest about wa­ter on the hill about two and a half years now – right 2019 - and every­body come. The min­is­ter come, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties come, the CEO of WASA come. Every­body come and they see our prob­lem on the hill and that’s over two and a half years now and no­body do any­thing about it so far,” he said.

Their neigh­bour, Yvonne Arnold, said her grand­chil­dren are now suf­fer­ing through the ex­pe­ri­ence of their par­ents.

“I used to go down to Bel­mont Park to bring up wa­ter for my chil­dren and them and now I have my grand­child with me now. Some­times it’s two of them, some­times it’s three of them. And for the longest while, we con­tin­ue with this wa­ter sit­u­a­tion. I used to go by a friend at the oth­er side and all and car­ry clothes to wash. Yuh can’t do that all the time. Yuh can’t do that,” she said.

Jef­fery Skeritt, 75, com­plained that res­i­dents have to de­pend on wa­ter trucks be­cause wa­ter sel­dom flows in the taps.

“If we do get wa­ter, we get­ting wa­ter once in two months. If we get wa­ter here a night, it com­ing like 12 o’clock, 1 o’clock in the morn­ing. You can’t get up to wash. Time you get up, the wa­ter gone. You can’t get up to do noth­ing,” he said.

Mean­while, Earl Mark high­light­ed is­sues with sev­en util­i­ty poles that have not been work­ing for months. He said calls have been made to the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) with no re­sults.

“We have lights not work­ing on Layan Hill up to 13 months, a year and a month, and they are not com­ing at all. So, we in dark­ness. We have cam­eras on the hill, a lot of cam­eras to pick up peo­ple be­cause al­lyuh know what go­ing on right now and we cam­eras can’t pick up noth­ing be­cause part of the hill in dark­ness,” he said.

Re­spond­ing to these con­cerns, T&TEC’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Curvis Fran­cois as­sured that the mat­ter would be im­me­di­ate­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed and re­pairs con­duct­ed as nec­es­sary.

Port-of-Spain North MP Stu­art Young said he was shocked to hear about home­own­ers not hav­ing wa­ter for months as no re­ports were made to his of­fice. He said the same about the street lights and promised to have the prob­lems ad­dressed.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so said he had not re­ceived any com­plaints, which he ac­knowl­edged were usu­al­ly for­ward­ed to him by Young. How­ev­er, he said many res­i­dents have in­stalled il­le­gal ap­pa­ra­tus on their lines which af­fects the wa­ter pres­sure for those at the high­er lev­el.

In Sep­tem­ber 2021, both min­is­ters vis­it­ed the area. At the time, Young said it was chal­leng­ing to boost the wa­ter up the hill be­cause of its topog­ra­phy.

WASAs CEO Kelvin Ro­main did not re­spond to calls for com­ment up to press time.