Thieves sab­o­taged a WASA boost­er sta­tion at Fyz­abad on Wednes­day night, steal­ing an undis­closed quan­ti­ty of ca­bles and cut­ting off wa­ter ac­cess to over 40,000 peo­ple in the process.

Be­fore gain­ing en­try to the boost­er sta­tion at Small Street, Thick Vil­lage, the van­dals al­so cut down a func­tion­al T&TEC elec­tric­i­ty pole which was con­nect­ed to the boost­er sta­tion.

The fa­cil­i­ty pumps wa­ter to sev­er­al ar­eas, in­clud­ing Quar­ry Road, Siparia; Fyz­abad Field Trace, San­ta Flo­ra; Su­dama Vil­lage; De Gannes Vil­lage; Syne Vil­lage and sev­er­al parts of Pe­nal, in­clud­ing Kat­wa­roo Trace, Ra­goo­nanan Trace, Batchyia Trace, La Coste­na, Dil Mo­hammed, Bernard Trace and Debe­di­al Road.

Dur­ing a tour of the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of WASA Kelvin Ro­main said it was a well-or­ches­trat­ed job. He said when the 1,200 Kilo­volts high ten­sion pow­er lines top­pled, the thieves punched a hole in the con­crete wall of the fa­cil­i­ty be­fore re­mov­ing all the ca­bles.

“Sup­ply was cut and then they took that high volt­age ca­ble. They cre­at­ed a hole in the wall to com­plete the re­trieval of the ca­ble. They then took this oth­er ca­ble be­hind this wall. So T&TEC and WASA in­fra­struc­ture were tak­en,” Ro­main added.

Call­ing for a ban on all cop­per trade, Ro­main said WASA will move to in­stall CCTV cam­eras at all fa­cil­i­ties and boost se­cu­ri­ty, as the in­ci­dents of theft were be­com­ing more preva­lent.

He not­ed that op­er­a­tors are fre­quent­ly on-site check­ing in­stru­ments but the thieves struck some­time af­ter mid­night and 5.45 am.

He said more has to be done to com­bat the cop­per ex­por­ta­tion trade.

“I share the view to ban the ex­por­ta­tion of cop­per. It is a na­tion­al is­sue we have to deal with. Just dri­ving up here alone, we see a lot of ca­bles have been cut,” he said.

He not­ed that 50 per cent of the plants had been brought back on stream fol­low­ing Tues­day’s in­clement weath­er.

He said the “das­tard­ly act of sab­o­tage” had af­fect­ed 40,000 peo­ple.

“We have 20,000 di­rect­ly af­fect­ed. This boost­er sup­ple­ments some of the sup­ply at the Pe­nal Wa­ter Treat­ment plant. We will def­i­nite­ly boost se­cu­ri­ty in and around in­stal­la­tions. It is not the first time we had theft.”

He could not di­vulge the val­ue of the ca­bles. 

Asked whether it was an in­side job, Ro­main said he would not say that. How­ev­er, he said it was clear some­one had the site un­der sur­veil­lance.