Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has promised re­lief for res­i­dents in com­mu­ni­ties that have en­dured weeks with­out a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply. He an­nounced in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day that he had di­rect­ed WASA to in­ten­si­fy its op­er­a­tions to pro­vide much-need­ed as­sis­tance to af­fect­ed ar­eas.

How­ev­er, that is of lit­tle com­fort to Tal­paro res­i­dent Vic­tor Book­er, who has not re­ceived a wa­ter sup­ply in ten weeks.

“The is­sue here is that the pump­ing sta­tion, I just checked with some­one in there and they said the fil­ter is not work­ing,” he said.

“Un­til they fix that fil­ter, the pump can’t push any wa­ter to the res­i­dents. It’s ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult be­cause, as you know, through­out the coun­try you need wa­ter for every­thing. For clean­li­ness in schools and plants, we need wa­ter, and not hav­ing wa­ter for a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time makes it ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult for any­thing you need to do.”

In Bois Bande Vil­lage, San­gre Grande, Ameen Han­iff said she had been de­prived of wa­ter since Jan­u­ary.

“It’s re­al­ly dif­fi­cult. I can­not send my child to school be­cause her uni­form is dirty, her socks and things are dirty,” she said.

“When you go to them, they’re telling you that you have to pay your WASA bill be­fore they could de­liv­er wa­ter here for you. How would I pay a WASA bill when I’m not even get­ting any wa­ter?

“I can­not wash, I can­not cook prop­er­ly, I have dish­es pil­ing up, pots stacked on top of each oth­er, child clothes pil­ing up, bed sheets dirty. You know, we’re get­ting some itch­ing on my skin.”

Han­iff was vis­it­ed by San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ken­wyn Phillip, who said: “I have re­ceived calls from some of the per­sons in this area try­ing to reach out to the su­per­vi­sor for this area from WASA. All calls went unan­swered. At the cor­po­ra­tion, we have our wa­ter ten­der but we ex­pe­ri­ence prob­lems with the wa­ter sup­ply in the fill­ing bay.”

Phillip said the cor­po­ra­tion has in­creased its bud­get for truck-borne wa­ter sup­ply to $750,000 to bet­ter as­sist burgess­es ex­pe­ri­enc­ing wa­ter short­ages. How­ev­er, he wants WASA to al­low the cor­po­ra­tion to ex­pand its wa­ter fill­ing sta­tions, as the one at Tu­rure is not ad­e­quate and some­times runs out of wa­ter.