Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents from sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in and around Ari­ma are call­ing for the ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), as they say the lack of a steady wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule has brought their lives to a stand­still.

These is­sues were raised dur­ing a protest at Flamin­go Boule­vard, Mal­abar, yes­ter­day morn­ing, where dis­grun­tled res­i­dents plead­ed with WASA for some re­lief.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les was there and ac­knowl­edged that of­fi­cials from WASA ex­plained the chal­lenges re­lat­ing to wa­ter sup­ply and how it was re­lat­ed to low­er lev­els of rain­fall record­ed for the year thus far.

“When I raised this in Par­lia­ment, WASA in­di­cat­ed the rain­fall was not as ex­pect­ed, so we have a re­duced sup­ply of wa­ter, but even if that is the case it would have been ex­pect­ed, and there­fore it is some­thing WASA should have ex­pect­ed and should have pre­pared for.”

Beck­les said her con­stituen­cy of Ari­ma was bor­dered to the west by St Ann’s East, mean­ing that most North Coast com­mu­ni­ties like Las Cuevas, Blan­chisseuse and La Fil­lette ex­pe­ri­enced se­vere wa­ter short­ages, while oth­er dis­tricts al­so faced dif­fi­cul­ties with a con­tin­u­ous wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule.

She not­ed that while truck-borne wa­ter was avail­able in some cas­es, it pre­sent­ed chal­lenges of its own.

“When peo­ple ap­ply for a truck-borne sup­ply, which they give from time to time, that is added to your WASA bill.

“Just yes­ter­day an old la­dy told me she didn’t have wa­ter for two weeks and they promised they were bring­ing it at 12 o’clock and the wa­ter still didn’t come.”

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as a “wa­ter cri­sis,” Beck­les called on WASA to clear­ly ex­plain the rea­son for the dis­rup­tion in ser­vice and when it could be rec­ti­fied, not­ing that in the ab­sence of clear mes­sag­ing, many res­i­dents felt that they were be­ing vic­timised on the ba­sis of their con­stituen­cy’s po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

“Some of them be­lieve they are be­ing vic­timised be­cause their con­stituen­cies did not vote for the UNC and you have to tell peo­ple that the wa­ter prob­lem is all over the coun­try. But we need them to have a bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan with the cit­i­zens, be­cause one thing we can­not do with­out is wa­ter.”

Al­so at­tend­ing the demon­stra­tion was MP for Mal­abar/ Mau­si­ca Do­minic Ro­main, who said that wa­ter con­nec­tiv­i­ty was on­ly one part of his con­stituen­cy’s prob­lems re­lat­ing to WASA, as he said age­ing in­fra­struc­ture has led to prob­lems in the ef­fec­tive dis­pos­al of waste­water.

When con­tact­ed, WASA told Guardian Me­dia that Mal­abar South Phas­es 1, 3, 4 and 4/2 re­ceived their sched­uled Tues­day, Thurs­day and Sat­ur­day sup­plies over the past three weeks, with ad­di­tion­al sup­plies pro­vid­ed on Mon­day 19 and Fri­day Oc­to­ber 23.

“Mal­abar North, ex­tend­ing north­ward from New­ton Boule­vard to Nel­son Street, in­clud­ing side streets off Mal­abar Main Road, is sched­uled to re­ceive wa­ter on Wednes­days and Sun­days.

“Re­duced pro­duc­tion at the Hol­lis Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant con­tin­ues to con­strain the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem.”

The au­thor­i­ty al­so re­port­ed that of­fi­cials from WASA met with Mal­abar/ Mau­si­ca MP Do­minic Ro­main and oth­er coun­cil­lors to ad­dress sup­ply is­sues, ac­cess to sched­ules and pro­ce­dures for re­quest­ing truck-borne wa­ter.

WASA al­so urged res­i­dents to re­port any dif­fi­cul­ties through es­tab­lished com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels so their spe­cif­ic con­cerns could be ad­dressed.