It’s wa­ter un­der the bridge at the Suarez Broth­ers Cir­cus at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. One day af­ter a video went vi­ral of Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) of­fi­cials dis­con­nect­ing what they called an “il­le­gal con­nec­tion,” the cir­cus now has a le­gal sup­ply. 

Di­rec­tor of the cir­cus Ivan Suarez told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he be­lieves the is­sue was blown out of pro­por­tion. 

He said he wasn’t at the site when the WASA of­fi­cials went to dis­con­nect the wa­ter and he saw the video on so­cial me­dia like every­one else. 

“We have the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion to be in place. We don’t have any is­sues with the Gov­ern­ment or any oth­er en­ti­ty. We’ve ap­plied for all the doc­u­ments. The cir­cus is com­ing here to have a show and en­ter­tain. We’re not here to steal any­thing. I think the peo­ple in­volved in this, they want to do a big thing,” he said.

In the video which cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty work­ers were seen re­mov­ing hoses from the WASA sta­tion. The video then pans over to the cir­cus just a few me­tres away. 

“This is where we’re col­lect­ing the hose, putting it in the van from the il­le­gal con­nec­tion from the cir­cus,” a voice is heard say­ing in the video.  “This is what we see here, we dis­con­nect, we mov­ing with the hose as ev­i­dence.”

Suarez said the in­ten­tion was nev­er to cre­ate an il­le­gal con­nec­tion. 

He said when they rent a venue, they use the wa­ter con­nec­tion there. In 2018 when the cir­cus was at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, they were able to use that con­nec­tion there.

He said, “I don’t know re­al­ly be­cause we have the con­nec­tion that we arranged with NCC to use the wa­ter from the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. It maybe a mis­un­der­stand­ing. We have our con­nec­tion. Every­body has an opin­ion about this. But now we have a prop­er con­nec­tion through the NCC.”

He showed Guardian Me­dia the con­nec­tion, which is a hose, about a hun­dred me­tres away, which runs in­to the tent. He said he paid NCC a con­nec­tion fee and will pay a dai­ly fee there­after. 

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les said on his Face­book page on Thurs­day, that he au­tho­rised the re­moval of the il­le­gal con­nec­tion. Speak­ing to the me­dia on Fri­day at SWM­COL’s 2024 Re­vised Mu­nic­i­pal Sol­id Waste Sec­tor Pol­i­cy Frame­work, he said the is­sue of il­le­gal con­nec­tions was par for the course at WASA. 

“The is­sue of steal­ing wa­ter is not a new phe­nom­e­non. It’s an in­tractable prob­lem in Trinidad and To­ba­go that the au­thor­i­ty is grap­pling with and deal­ing with.” 

He said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was tak­ing place and once the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed, any ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion would be tak­en.

But Suarez said de­spite the well-pub­li­cised in­ci­dent, in­ter­est in the cir­cus is still very high.