KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Sib­lings Aiden, An­ton and Aria Corn­wall looked on with cu­rios­i­ty as the adults in their neigh­bour­hood protest­ed for wa­ter yes­ter­day af­ter be­ing with­out a pipe-borne sup­ply for more than a month.

For over a week, twins Aiden and An­ton have not at­tend­ed class­es at Pe­nal Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and their three-year-old sis­ter, Aria, has been ab­sent from COBC Lit­tle An­gels Preschool, be­cause their uni­forms are dirty. Their moth­er, De­vi­ka Sub­naik, said the fam­i­ly sur­vives on the two kegs of wa­ter her hus­band gets dai­ly from neigh­bours. They can on­ly wash and cook.

Wa­ter woes are an ex­pe­ri­ence shared by res­i­dents of Lowkie Trace Ext in Char­lo Vil­lage, Pe­nal. They are plead­ing with the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to pro­vide the wa­ter they pay for.

Sub­naik said the pres­sure is of­ten too low to get to her home.

“As you see, I have three small chil­dren. It does not even have wa­ter for me to cook for them now. They have been home for the past week and more be­cause there is no wa­ter to wash school clothes. Even for them to bathe or drink, we have to ask neigh­bours . . . That is how we have sur­vived the past cou­ple of months.” she said.

Every week for the past two months, Ram­raj So­bri­an has been load­ing his pan­el van with plas­tic con­tain­ers and dri­ving to a stand­pipe at Su­chit Trace. Buy­ing truck-borne wa­ter costs a fam­i­ly of sev­en $350 to $400. One truck fills three tanks, which can last ten days for on­ly es­sen­tial needs.

So­bri­an said he called WASA for a truck-borne sup­ply two months ago but nev­er re­ceived any. He said dry taps have been their lifestyle for the past two years and they usu­al­ly catch rain­wa­ter. How­ev­er, with­out rain for weeks, their tanks are emp­ty.

“It is un­fair to me, pay­ing a WASA bill and you have to pay so much mon­ey. That is on­ly wa­ter for me to wash, show­er and do the laun­dry. I still have to go to the gro­cery and spend hun­dreds of dol­lars on wa­ter for us to drink and cook,” he said.

Lisa Al­leyne said when there is wa­ter in the vil­lage, some res­i­dents use wa­ter pumps to fill their tanks pre­vent­ing it from get­ting to homes on the hill. She said she called the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion sev­er­al times this year for help but got no re­sponse. A $350 truck-borne sup­ply does not last her fam­i­ly a week.

“How are you bathing? How are you cook­ing? How are you wash­ing your wares? How are you flush­ing your toi­let? How are you wash­ing your clothes?” Al­leyne asked.

Giselle Williams said she has to buy dou­bles dai­ly be­cause she can­not cook or wash dish­es. Williams said she is fed up and wants to take WASA to court. She even con­sid­ered go­ing out­side Siparia MP Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s home to com­plain, hop­ing WASA would lis­ten to her. She said some­one in Par­lia­ment has to help the neigh­bour­hood.

“I am feel­ing to cry, but I will not. Some­times I do not have wa­ter to drink. I am strain­ing old wa­ter. When done, there are black things in the strain­er be­cause it is not wa­ter I am sup­posed to drink. I do not have wa­ter. I do not know when it is com­ing. Some­times, I can­not bathe. Some­times, I have re­al things in my house to cook. I can­not even put on a pot,” she said.

WASA of­fi­cials said Lowkie Trace re­ceives a sup­ply from the Pe­nal Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant which is sup­ple­ment­ed by the Ca­roni/Point Lisas de­sali­na­tion sys­tem. How­ev­er, the wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule was af­fect­ed by the re­cent dis­rup­tions at the Ca­roni and Point Lisas plants.

“In keep­ing with ef­forts to nor­mal­ize the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem fol­low­ing these dis­rup­tions, a sup­ply was pro­vid­ed to the Lowkie Trace area, over the pe­ri­od Wednes­day 6th to Thurs­day 7th Sep­tem­ber, when the ser­vice was in­ter­rupt­ed by a rup­tured 8-inch di­am­e­ter pipeline. As a re­sult of this de­vel­op­ment, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 hous­es at the ex­trem­i­ties of the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem did not re­ceive a full sup­ply,” WASA said.

WASA said it is mak­ing arrange­ments to pro­vide a ser­vice to the area.