Yvonne Ba­boolal

San Fran­cique res­i­dents staged a ma­jor protest for wa­ter on March 2.

Last Thurs­day, Pe­nal res­i­dents said the sit­u­a­tion was still, ba­si­cal­ly, the same. Places like Boodoo Trace, Mo­hess Road, Trans­fer and Dig­i­ty con­tin­ue to suf­fer for wa­ter. "Places like Dig­i­ty do not have wa­ter at all and de­pend on a truck-born sup­ply from the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. "In places like Boodoo Trace, they are bring­ing wa­ter once every two weeks and they are not bring­ing it ac­cord­ing to their sched­ule," a res­i­dent said. "If we don't have tanks down here, we dead." Gran Cou­va res­i­dents, who were sup­posed to get wa­ter once a week ac­cord­ing to WASA's new sched­ule, did not get any for al­most two weeks re­cent­ly.

The Sun­day Guardian was told by WASA that a prob­lem with the Ca­roni Dam was re­spon­si­ble. They said the wa­ter "was not reach­ing Gran Cou­va." How­ev­er, af­ter WASA was told that vil­lagers were plan­ning a protest, the wa­ter came, at full pres­sure, the fol­low­ing day. Res­i­dents of Coros­al in Gran Cou­va, who nev­er had pipe borne wa­ter, have a com­mu­nal tank which WASA fills. But they com­plained that it hasn't been filled for ten days.

De­lay in con­struct­ing Mamoral Dam

Vice-Chair­man of the Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Hen­ry Awong says WASA's com­mu­nal tanks are in­suf­fi­cient for places like Mun­do Nue­vo, Bras­so Ve­na­do and Los At­ta­jos in the cor­po­ra­tion, which nev­er had pipe borne wa­ter. "As soon as it's filled, peo­ple rush for the wa­ter to wash, cook, bathe and so on. The tanks are emp­tied quick­ly." Awong, al­so chair­man of the cor­po­ra­tion's Pub­lic Health Com­mit­tee, said the cor­po­ra­tion, which nor­mal­ly sup­plies wa­ter to these ar­eas dur­ing the dry sea­son, has been un­able to do so this year, through no fault of theirs. "We nor­mal­ly fill the trucks at hy­drants in places like En­deav­our, Tabaquite and Corinth in the South for ar­eas like Gas­par­il­lo.

"We are now re­quired to fill all the trucks serv­ing dif­fer­ent parts of the largest con­stituen­cy in T&T at one hy­drant in Cou­va, at an ex­or­bi­tant cost to the cor­po­ra­tion," Awong said. "Trucks have to fill up in Cou­va and go all the way to Mun­do Nue­vo, for in­stance, and re­turn for more trips. This is too cost­ly for the cor­po­ra­tion and, so far, we have been un­able to do it. "Peo­ple are re­al­ly suf­fer­ing for wa­ter in these ar­eas. "Af­ter this Gov­ern­ment has spent mil­lions on all kinds of things, peo­ple are still putting bar­rels by the road­side hop­ing to get two rims of wa­ter." Awong al­so lashed out at the Gov­ern­ment over its de­lay in the con­struc­tion of the Mamoral Dam. "For the past sev­en to eight years, in every bud­get, they have been al­lo­cat­ing mon­ey for the Mamoral Dam and noth­ing has ma­te­ri­alised as yet. Where is this mon­ey go­ing?" he asked.

ABOVE: WASA wa­ter leaks in Paramin last Mon­day as farm­ers beg for wa­ter.

WASA's wa­ter plans

1. On Jan­u­ary 29, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid an­nounced in Par­lia­ment that WASA will im­ple­ment an im­me­di­ate ac­tion plan to deal with the par­tic­u­lar­ly dry sea­son. Call­ing on cit­i­zens to con­serve wa­ter, he said the Man­age­ment Ac­tion Plan will pro­vide wa­ter to the pop­u­la­tion with­in the next 18 months. He said 70 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion will re­ceive a wa­ter sup­ply for four to sev­en days. Twen­ty five per cent will re­ceive wa­ter three to four days and five per cent, one to three days.

2. Ab­dul-Hamid said the plan al­so in­cludes the in­stal­la­tion of five potable wa­ter treat­ment plants, the com­ple­tion of 34 new wells and the con­struc­tion of four small-pack­age de­sali­na­tion plants. It al­so in­cludes pipeline in­stal­la­tion in dif­fer­ent parts of T&T and the re­pair­ing of leaks. (On Feb­ru­ary 4, WASA's new act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Dr Jim Lee Young, said these projects were ex­pect­ed to come on stream with­in the next three to six months.)

3. Ab­dul-Hamid said WASA's first or­der of busi­ness has been to ad­dress the qual­i­ty of man­age­ment. He said with com­ing of stream of a new board, WASA has ap­point­ed a new deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, new chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer, new head of fi­nance, new se­nior en­gi­neers and ad­di­tion­al per­son­nel. He said a new CEO has been iden­ti­fied and will take up his ap­point­ment in the com­ing weeks.

4. At a Feb­ru­ary 1 con­fer­ence, WASA chair­man, Shafeek Sul­tan-Khan, said pre­vi­ous man­age­ments were re­spon­si­ble for il­le­gal prac­tices in the au­thor­i­ty. He said poor gov­er­nance by for­mer WASA ex­ec­u­tives was the rea­son many are still suf­fer­ing for wa­ter.

5. On Jan­u­ary 29, a WASA re­lease said two wells were com­mis­sioned in north and south Trinidad. The re­lease said the new Pe­nal well No 25, on Mo­ra Dam Road, has been pressed in­to ser­vice with an es­ti­mat­ed dai­ly pro­duc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty of 120,000 gal­lons.Cus­tomers in San Fran­cique and oth­er parts of Pe­nal were ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit.

6. On Feb­ru­ary 5, Lee Young an­nounced that vil­lages that do not have ac­cess to a wa­ter sup­ply are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from 500 com­mu­nal wa­ter tanks.

7. WASA said on Feb­ru­ary 12 that 1,280 leaks were re­paired in sev­en days.