Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has as­sured To­bag­o­ni­ans that the is­land’s cur­rent wa­ter short­age is not the re­sult of mis­man­age­ment, but rather a com­bi­na­tion of re­duced rain­fall and op­er­a­tional chal­lenges with­in the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day at the Cour­land Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant in Ply­mouth, Au­gus­tine urged res­i­dents not to blame WASA of­fi­cials or Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“I don’t want peo­ple to think that some­thing ne­far­i­ous is hap­pen­ing while you’re not get­ting wa­ter,” he said.

“It’s not be­cause Bri­an Williams wicked, while you’re not get­ting wa­ter. It’s not be­cause Kam­la is spit­ing me while we’re not get­ting wa­ter. It’s not be­cause WASA is not do­ing what they’re do­ing. It is a case where we just don’t have enough, and we are try­ing to en­sure that wa­ter is shared fair­ly.”

Au­gus­tine out­lined mea­sures to man­age the sup­ply, in­clud­ing redi­rect­ing wa­ter from oth­er zones to as­sist south­west To­ba­go com­mu­ni­ties.

“We will al­so pub­lish tem­po­rary sched­ules, start­ing to­mor­row, up­dat­ed week­ly on so­cial me­dia and oth­er lo­cal plat­forms,” he said.

He added that ad­just­ments would be made dur­ing high-de­mand pe­ri­ods such as Car­ni­val lat­er this month, when an es­ti­mat­ed 40,000 ad­di­tion­al vis­i­tors are ex­pect­ed in south­west To­ba­go.

The Chief Sec­re­tary al­so stressed the need for long-term so­lu­tions.

“We re­al­ly can­not de­pend on just rain­fall and ground­wa­ter sup­ply be­cause of cli­mate change is­sues. It is not con­sis­tent. It is not re­li­able,” he said.

How­ev­er, for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said To­ba­go’s cur­rent dif­fi­cul­ties re­flect a fail­ure to main­tain sys­tems in­tro­duced un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Gon­za­les re­called that dur­ing his tenure, To­ba­go faced a sim­i­lar cri­sis, which was ad­dressed through new wells at Mary’s Hill and Sig­nal Hill, a boost­er sta­tion at Chau­vin Road, and a 7.2-kilo­me­tre pipeline link­ing Sig­nal Hill to Crown Point.

“Those im­prove­ments re­duced wa­ter truck­ing re­quests in south­west To­ba­go from 60 per day to vir­tu­al­ly ze­ro,” he said.

“The present ad­min­is­tra­tion and THA are in­com­pe­tent, be­cause with the in­vest­ment made, al­most the whole of To­ba­go spoke about the ben­e­fits of those im­prove­ments. We know we don’t con­trol rain­fall, but we put sys­tems in place to mit­i­gate short­falls.”

As To­ba­go pre­pares to cel­e­brate its fourth Car­ni­val, Au­gus­tine said new plants ex­pect­ed to come on stream will help boost sup­ply and en­sure de­mand is met.