Ralph Ban­warie

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray has held strate­gic meet­ing be­tween se­nior of­fi­cials from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from var­i­ous lo­cal vil­lage coun­cils.

The ob­jec­tive of the meet­ing was aimed to ad­dress the per­sis­tent­ly in­ad­e­quate wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vice ex­pe­ri­enced by com­mu­ni­ties in and around Ma­yaro.

Mem­bers of the par­tic­i­pat­ing vil­lage coun­cils raised con­cerns per­tain­ing to sched­ul­ing, wa­ter truck­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, road re­pairs, wa­ter pres­sure, and the press­ing is­sue of land­slips with­in the Au­thor­i­ty's purview.

Dur­ing his open­ing re­marks, MP Paray em­pha­sized that ac­cess to wa­ter is an es­sen­tial hu­man right that can­not be as­signed a price tag.

He stat­ed that every cit­i­zen is en­ti­tled to a reg­u­lar and de­pend­able sup­ply of wa­ter, stress­ing that the pro­longed pe­ri­ods of 10, 14, and 21 days with­out wa­ter were ir­re­spon­si­ble, un­ac­cept­able, and in­hu­mane in the year 2023.

While MP Paray ac­knowl­edged the medi­um and long-term strate­gies out­lined by WASA to achieve a 24/5 or 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply across the en­tire con­stituen­cy, he high­light­ed the ur­gent need to ad­dress the im­me­di­ate re­quire­ments of the af­fect­ed pop­u­la­tion.

To this end, the MP pro­posed con­sid­er­ing a de­cen­tral­ized mod­el for wa­ter truck­ing and cus­tomer truck­ing re­quests in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ma­yaro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

In re­sponse WASA of­fi­cials made a com­mit­ment in ad­dress­ing some of the key con­cerns raised by the Vil­lage Coun­cils, fo­cus­ing on fea­si­ble short-term so­lu­tions.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, they pledged to keep MP Paray ap­prised of the progress made in both the medi­um and long-term ini­tia­tives, while al­so com­mit­ting to ex­plore en­hanced wa­ter truck­ing meth­ods to meet the press­ing needs of the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.