Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter al­most three weeks with­out wa­ter in their taps, frus­trat­ed res­i­dents of Khan­hai Road North, Bar­rack­pore, yes­ter­day burned tyres dur­ing a plac­ard demon­stra­tion. Com­plain­ing that rough­ly 800 res­i­dents are af­fect­ed, the res­i­dents said they be­gan protest­ing on Sat­ur­day and will con­tin­ue protest­ing un­til they get a rea­son­able sup­ply.

Res­i­dent Kharam­chan Ramkelawan said they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing wa­ter chal­lenges over the last three years, but this year has been the worst so far. While the hard dry sea­son has af­fect­ed sup­ply, he be­lieves they are be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly vic­timised since neigh­bour­ing streets get reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply.

“If they say they are reg­u­lat­ing wa­ter and say you are all get­ting wa­ter three days for the week, every­body could fill their tanks and have wa­ter, but this is not what they do­ing. They lock­ing off the wa­ter and not telling you when they putting on the wa­ter and not putting on the wa­ter.”

Lament­ing that yes­ter­day marked 17 days since they had wa­ter, he said most house­holds have two tanks, and when they are emp­ty, res­i­dents have to search for and buy wa­ter. Moved to tears, Rook­min Rooplal said her hus­band passed away in March, and for the prayer ser­vice Hin­dus ob­serve fol­low­ing a loved one’s death, she had no wa­ter. “We had to ask our coun­cil­lor for wa­ter,” she cried.

Dur­ing a meet­ing with WASA of­fi­cials two months ago, she said they were promised an im­proved sup­ply. She ad­mit­ted to ow­ing $800 in ar­rears, but claimed she would not pay for the ser­vice she is not get­ting.

An­oth­er res­i­dent Shar­da Boodoo said on Sat­ur­day she had to a friend’s home to take a show­er.

Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj said oth­er ar­eas, in­clud­ing Rochard Road, Debe, and Mo­hess Road, al­so have wa­ter sup­ply chal­lenges. He said the cor­po­ra­tion had con­tract­ed truck-borne wa­ter ser­vices, but they didn’t have the funds to con­tin­ue them and were left with on­ly one truck owned by the cor­po­ra­tion to de­liv­er wa­ter.

Call­ing on WASA to in­crease its wa­ter truck­ing ser­vice to af­fect­ed ar­eas, he said they are al­so grap­pling with swarms of mos­qui­toes. He said there have been sev­er­al cas­es of dengue, and two re­lat­ed deaths in the Pe­nal-Debe re­gion. 

When con­tact­ed, WASA stat­ed that they would in­ves­ti­gate the com­plaints from the res­i­dents.