KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing on Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath to ad­dress com­plaints of pro­longed wa­ter short­ages in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties.

Speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Beck­les said de­spite the min­is­ter’s in­sis­tence that there is no na­tion­al wa­ter cri­sis, res­i­dents from sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in north-east­ern Trinidad have re­port­ed be­ing with­out a pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply for weeks.

Beck­les said, “It’s the num­ber of peo­ple that are call­ing me as it re­lates to not hav­ing wa­ter. As a mat­ter of fact, yes­ter­day (Wednes­day), I had a gen­tle­man from Nel­son Street in Ari­ma in­di­cate he hasn’t had wa­ter for 16 days. Peo­ple from Pin­to, from Mal­abar, San­ta Rosa Heights, sev­er­al places are call­ing and in­di­cat­ing chal­lenges for wa­ter, as well as ar­eas of San­gre Grande, Cleaver (Road), Lopinot.”

How­ev­er, Padarath has main­tained that the coun­try is not ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a wa­ter cri­sis.

In a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, he said, “There is no wa­ter cri­sis across the coun­try at this time. We are work­ing to­wards fix­ing the chal­lenges that we in­her­it­ed over the last decade of lit­tle in­vest­ment in the wa­ter sec­tor. The afore­men­tioned ar­eas are im­pact­ed by the fail­ure to im­ple­ment long-term so­lu­tions of in­creased ca­pac­i­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has al­so said that the dri­er-than-usu­al start to the wet sea­son has kept reser­voir lev­els low, re­quir­ing sched­uled wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion in sev­er­al ar­eas.