DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents and busi­ness op­er­a­tors across Mal­oney, Arou­ca and Ari­ma are grap­pling with an un­re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply, but opin­ions dif­fer on whether the is­sue amounts to po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion in con­stituen­cies rep­re­sent­ed by the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) or the peren­ni­al un­re­li­able ser­vice by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty.

While some be­lieve their com­mu­ni­ties are be­ing ne­glect­ed be­cause of their po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, oth­ers in­sist the prob­lem pre­dates the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion and re­flects long­stand­ing de­fi­cien­cies in the wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem.

Dur­ing a Guardian Me­dia vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ties on Fri­day, an Arou­ca res­i­dent who iden­ti­fied him­self on­ly as Whiskey said he viewed the sit­u­a­tion as po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

“I feel that it’s ne­glect be­cause this is a PNM con­stituen­cy. When the PNM was in gov­ern­ment, they tried to make im­prove­ments,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ari­ma res­i­dent Rose­marie Mo­hammed dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the short­ages are linked to the cur­rent gov­ern­ment.

“That hap­pen­ing long time, not now. It’s been go­ing on for years, since I was grow­ing up,” she said.

Re­gard­less of the cause, res­i­dents say the im­me­di­ate is­sue is their abil­i­ty to ac­cess wa­ter re­li­ably.

For cater­er and busi­ness own­er Lena Pierre-Vial­va of Arou­ca, op­er­at­ing with­out a con­sis­tent sup­ply has be­come in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult.

“We have to fill buck­ets when­ev­er wa­ter comes. Some­times we have to send peo­ple to near­by stand­pipes just to get enough wa­ter to op­er­ate,” she said.

In Mal­oney Gar­dens, fruit ven­dor Anal­isa Benett said sched­uled de­liv­er­ies have be­come in­creas­ing­ly er­rat­ic.

“This week we on­ly re­ceived wa­ter twice, and it wasn’t enough to meet our usu­al needs,” she said. “It’s not reg­u­lar and it’s not avail­able long enough.”

Benett said the un­cer­tain­ty has dis­rupt­ed both her busi­ness and house­hold rou­tine.

“We are suf­fer­ing through it. I’ve had to lim­it my wa­ter use and post­pone wash­ing be­cause I don’t know when the wa­ter will come. As a busi­ness own­er, I used to or­gan­ise my sched­ule around the sup­ply, but now I can’t do that.”

The im­pact ex­tends be­yond house­holds.

A restau­rant own­er in Arou­ca, who iden­ti­fied her­self as Lin­da, said pur­chas­ing wa­ter has be­come nec­es­sary to keep her busi­ness run­ning.

“We have to buy wa­ter in kegs for cook­ing and fill every con­tain­er when­ev­er wa­ter comes. Most of the time, we’re buy­ing wa­ter just to stay open,” she said.

In Ari­ma, glass­mak­er Mervyn Ramdeen de­scribed the short­ages as in­ter­mit­tent.

“Every month or so we ex­pe­ri­ence a lit­tle short­age,” he said.

Mo­hammed said the ef­fects are par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing for fam­i­lies.

“Every­thing we do re­quires wa­ter. We have chil­dren go­ing to class­es, clothes to wash and an­i­mals to care for. When there’s no wa­ter, it’s a re­al prob­lem,” she said.

The is­sue has be­come in­creas­ing­ly politi­cised as com­plaints have reached elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Govt, Op­po­si­tion wran­gle over is­sue

Arou­ca/Lopinot MP and PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of po­lit­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing Op­po­si­tion-held con­stituen­cies, ar­gu­ing that com­mu­ni­ties through­out East Trinidad are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing wors­en­ing ser­vice.

Gon­za­les said he re­cent­ly re­quest­ed truck-borne wa­ter from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath for his con­stituen­cy of­fice and re­ceived it with­in an hour.

He not­ed it was the first time in about sev­en years he had need­ed such as­sis­tance.

“When I speak about po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, I’m talk­ing about the wider pic­ture. Res­i­dents of Arou­ca, Mal­oney, Mal­abar, La Floris­sante and Ari­ma con­tin­ue to com­plain that wa­ter re­li­a­bil­i­ty has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly since this Gov­ern­ment took of­fice,” Gon­za­les said.

Padarath, how­ev­er, has strong­ly re­ject­ed the al­le­ga­tion.

He said the ad­min­is­tra­tion in­her­it­ed a sys­tem plagued by long­stand­ing in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems and is at­tempt­ing to share lim­it­ed re­sources more eq­ui­tably with ar­eas that his­tor­i­cal­ly re­ceive lit­tle or no wa­ter for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods.

“While some ar­eas may have ex­pe­ri­enced re­duc­tions, it is be­cause we are en­sur­ing wa­ter is al­so sup­plied to com­mu­ni­ties that tra­di­tion­al­ly go weeks, if not months, with­out ser­vice,” Padarath said. “There is no is­sue of po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion.”

The min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment is mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion close­ly and ex­pects ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture up­grades in the com­ing months. He al­so cit­ed on­go­ing pro­duc­tion chal­lenges, in­clud­ing re­duced wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty and the need to re­dis­trib­ute sup­ply across the sys­tem.

Trinci­ty/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who was out of the coun­try and un­avail­able for an in­ter­view, said in a writ­ten state­ment that res­i­dents had been com­plain­ing about un­re­li­able ser­vice for more than a year.

She said com­mu­ni­ties that pre­vi­ous­ly op­er­at­ed un­der es­tab­lished wa­ter sched­ules are no longer re­ceiv­ing ser­vice ac­cord­ing to those sched­ules, leav­ing res­i­dents un­cer­tain about when wa­ter will be avail­able.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so ref­er­enced fig­ures cit­ed by Padarath in Par­lia­ment ear­li­er this year, in­clud­ing a WASA in­fra­struc­ture au­dit that iden­ti­fied a dai­ly pro­duc­tion deficit of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5.34 mil­lion gal­lons in the North-East and found 20 of 21 crit­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties op­er­at­ing at ef­fec­tive­ly ze­ro per cent re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Robin­son-Reg­is, Padarath de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “a chron­ic, sys­tem­at­ic in­her­i­tance” re­quir­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5 mil­lion in re­pairs and up­grades to re­store re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

She ar­gued the da­ta points to a broad­er in­fra­struc­ture cri­sis rather than iso­lat­ed ser­vice in­ter­rup­tions.

The Op­po­si­tion MP al­so high­light­ed well-drilling projects and re­pairs un­der­tak­en by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing up­grades to the Arou­ca boost­er sta­tion, which she said had since suf­fered from in­ad­e­quate main­te­nance.

She fur­ther not­ed that WASA ac­knowl­edged in May a grow­ing num­ber of com­plaints from res­i­dents in Arou­ca, Mal­oney and Ari­ma, while pro­duc­tion at the North Oropouche Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant had re­port­ed­ly fall­en from 20 mil­lion to 16 mil­lion gal­lons per day.

Robin­son-Reg­is warned against at­tribut­ing the short­ages sole­ly to dry weath­er, ar­gu­ing that un­der­ly­ing in­fra­struc­ture de­fi­cien­cies re­main a crit­i­cal fac­tor.

For some res­i­dents, how­ev­er, pol­i­tics is be­side the point.

“This has noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics,” Lin­da said.

“This is about liv­ing. If we can’t get wa­ter to sus­tain our busi­ness, then there’s noth­ing left.”

Ari­ma MP and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

Gon­za­les said the Op­po­si­tion was pre­pared to es­ca­late its re­sponse, in­clud­ing protest ac­tion, if the is­sue is not ad­dressed.

For res­i­dents of Mal­oney, Arou­ca and Ari­ma, the po­lit­i­cal de­bate con­tin­ues. What re­mains undis­put­ed is the need for a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply.