RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter more than a decade of bail­ing out chlo­ri­nat­ed wa­ter from a hole dug in­to the low­er floor of her home, a Debe moth­er is hop­ing that Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath will in­ter­vene and or­der a fresh in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what she be­lieves is leak­ing WASA wa­ter un­der­min­ing her prop­er­ty.

Jhu­mantie Mo­hammed, who lives at the low­est point of Ghan­di Vil­lage, Debe, said she has been bat­tling the per­sis­tent seep­age since 2015, with an ear­li­er in­ci­dent dat­ing back to 2004.

The con­crete struc­ture of her two-storey home sits be­low road lev­el, and wa­ter con­tin­u­ous­ly seeps up through the down­stairs floor, flood­ing the area and threat­en­ing the in­tegri­ty of the build­ing.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Mo­hammed said for years she man­u­al­ly bailed the wa­ter dai­ly. How­ev­er, now suf­fer­ing from heart prob­lems, in­clud­ing a clogged artery and a pre­vi­ous heart at­tack, she said she is phys­i­cal­ly un­able to con­tin­ue.

"I used to emp­ty it every day. I can­not do it any­more. I have to lie down flat on my bel­ly to soak up the wa­ter, and I can’t man­age that now," she said.

As a re­sult, the down­stairs por­tion of the house — where she lived most of her life — is no longer us­able.

Mo­hammed has boxed up her kitchen uten­sils, re­moved fur­ni­ture and re­lo­cat­ed be­long­ings to a shed af­ter re­peat­ed flood­ing dam­aged cup­boards and house­hold items.

"I had to re­move every­thing. I can’t cook down­stairs any­more. My pos­ses­sions are wa­ter-soaked, and I’m con­stant­ly afraid the foun­da­tion will give way," she said.

Mo­hammed said she has sought as­sis­tance from mul­ti­ple agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), the Om­buds­man, the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), and the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI), but re­mains with­out a res­o­lu­tion.

She said she was ini­tial­ly told the wa­ter could be from a cesspit, sur­face runoff, rain­wa­ter or a nat­ur­al spring. How­ev­er, she in­sists ex­ten­sive test­ing has proven oth­er­wise.

Ac­cord­ing to a CARIRI lab­o­ra­to­ry analy­sis con­duct­ed in Oc­to­ber 2025, a wa­ter sam­ple tak­en from the flood­ed down­stairs area con­tained resid­ual chlo­rine, a find­ing con­sis­tent with treat­ed pipe-borne wa­ter and not nat­ur­al ground­wa­ter or spring wa­ter.

"Spring wa­ter doesn’t have chlo­rine. Cesspit wa­ter doesn’t look like this. This wa­ter is clean, clear and test­ed pos­i­tive for chlo­rine," Mo­hammed said.

De­spite the find­ings, Mo­hammed said WASA has not fixed the prob­lem, main­tain­ing that in­ves­ti­ga­tions over the years found no leaks in its in­fra­struc­ture.

Cor­re­spon­dence from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties in­di­cates that WASA con­duct­ed sev­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions be­tween 2015 and 2025 and con­clud­ed the seep­age was not from its sup­ply, rec­om­mend­ing in­stead that prop­er drainage be con­struct­ed and that an un­der­ground wa­ter source be iden­ti­fied.

Mo­hammed, how­ev­er, be­lieves the source may be an old gal­vanised pipe or a re­lo­cat­ed fire hy­drant near her prop­er­ty, or a for­mer stand­pipe con­nec­tion high­er up the road.

"I just want them to cut and check the old line prop­er­ly. Check the hy­drant. Check every­thing. My house is be­ing un­der­mined," she said.

Un­able to af­ford le­gal ac­tion, Mo­hammed said she is ap­peal­ing di­rect­ly to the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter to step in be­fore the dam­age be­comes ir­re­versible.

"I worked hard all my life as a sin­gle par­ent. I don’t want char­i­ty — I want the truth and for this to be fixed be­fore my house col­laps­es," she said.

She al­so called for an at­tor­ney to pick up her case.

"I have no mon­ey to hire a lawyer, but I can­not live like this any­more," she cried.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Debe coun­cil­lor Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh said he sym­pa­this­es with Mo­hammed’s sit­u­a­tion and will write to WASA to vis­it the prop­er­ty.

He said af­ter her last com­plaints in 2012, a new line was com­mis­sioned.

"She has been deal­ing with this for far too long. I will be reach­ing out to WASA to have an­oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion done and to have this mat­ter re­solved," Per­sads­ingh said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Padarath said he in­struct­ed WASA to do a site vis­it and an as­sess­ment of Mo­hammed's com­plaint.

"They are to re­port to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties AS­AP on their find­ings."

Mean­while, WASA, in a state­ment, said the Dis­tri­b­u­tion, Wa­ter Loss and Lab­o­ra­to­ry Ser­vices Teams have been sched­uled to do a site vis­it and in­ves­ti­gate.

WASA said fol­low­ing the site vis­it and tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tions, the au­thor­i­ty will re­view and pro­vide feed­back.