Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Mt D'or are set to get a boost in their wa­ter sup­ply in the com­ing weeks af­ter a promise by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty’s (WASA) act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Jee­van Joseph, to pro­cure a new pump for the area.

Joseph, along with act­ing Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Aranguez/St Joseph De­vesh Ma­haraj, toured the Mt D'or boost­er sta­tion yes­ter­day.

Calvert Spence, a res­i­dent from Champs Fleurs, told the me­dia the com­mu­ni­ty has been suf­fer­ing for the last three years. He said, "The whole of Mt D'or don't get wa­ter, so it comes like half of Mt D'or have to de­pend on the next half to get wa­ter, even if they send chil­dren to school, even if it's to cook, even if it's to bathe on a dai­ly ba­sis, but at the end of the day, some­times we just thank the Fa­ther for the rain. Some­times we get from the spring, so the peo­ple who do not get any, the pipe-borne wa­ter, can still get some­thing from the spring."

Joseph said WASA had tak­en out the pump to place it at an­oth­er lo­ca­tion and left the sta­tion un­at­tend­ed.

Ameen said, "What we are see­ing is a con­tin­u­a­tion of mis­man­age­ment un­der the for­mer gov­ern­ment, where they would take re­sources from one place to put to an­oth­er place just for PR. When you look at the wel­fare and the well-be­ing of peo­ple who sup­port­ed them, and that is why they would have lost the elec­tion, be­cause they took the peo­ple of Mt D'or for grant­ed."

How­ev­er, a WASA tech­ni­cian, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, re­ject­ed claims that res­i­dents had been with­out wa­ter for years, de­scrib­ing the claims as a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He said he was part of a team that reg­u­lar­ly turned valves on and off to sup­ply wa­ter but not­ed that some res­i­dents had built struc­tures out­side the ap­proved zones for wa­ter ac­cess.

It’s a claim for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les backed up. He told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, "The peo­ple high­er up, those same per­sons, they start­ed clam­or­ing and say­ing, well, we're on­ly treat­ing the peo­ple low­er down bet­ter than them be­cause they are squat­ters and what have you. We had to ex­plain to them that the plan was to im­prove the sup­ply of wa­ter for the en­tire area, but they had a unique prob­lem that was out­side of our con­trol. They need­ed to li­aise with the landown­er to get the ap­pro­pri­ate per­mis­sion."

Plans for CEPEP and URP com­ing in bud­get

Mean­while, the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment said de­tails of the Gov­ern­ment’s plans for the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), the Re­for­esta­tion Pro­gramme, and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) would be out­lined in the bud­get.

She said, "I am cer­tain you'll hear more of that in the bud­get and as we roll out new pro­grammes. URP falls di­rect­ly un­der the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment now. CEPEP is in Pub­lic Util­i­ties. Reaf­foresta­tion is in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture. But what I can tell you, in URP, what we are do­ing now, we are do­ing au­dits, we are do­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, we are in the process of pro­vid­ing peo­ple with their ter­mi­na­tion let­ters and that process will con­tin­ue to make us ready for the new fi­nan­cial year when we go in with the new struc­ture."

In June, Gov­ern­ment ter­mi­nat­ed over 300 con­tracts. Mere days lat­er, 4,600 work­ers and con­trac­tors from the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Pro­gramme were fired. Then in Sep­tem­ber, the Gov­ern­ment sus­pend­ed the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme, claim­ing cor­rup­tion in all three make-work pro­grammes.