Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer re­mind­ed protest­ing res­i­dents that block­ing the road is an of­fence. East­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Ryan Khan did so in re­sponse to fiery wa­ter protests by res­i­dents of Ma­yaro and Rio Claro which caused at least six block­ages along the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road yes­ter­day.

In a me­dia re­lease, Khan said while the po­lice un­der­stand the plight of the af­fect­ed res­i­dents, they should high­light their is­sues in a man­ner that does not in­con­ve­nience road users and put dri­vers at risk.

The po­lice be­gan re­ceiv­ing re­ports about blocked roads, in­clud­ing two block­ages with de­bris and burn­ing tyres in Rio Claro, and four block­ages with burn­ing tyres, de­bris and fall­en trees in Ma­yaro at around 4.30 am.

At one lo­ca­tion, there was a steel pipe across the road­way weld­ed to a met­al bridge with plac­ards that read ‘NO WA­TER’.

Po­lice of­fi­cers and per­son­nel from the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion and Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, ex­tin­guished the fires and re­moved the block­ages.

A res­i­dent, who gave his name as An­gus, com­plained: “The prob­lem is wa­ter. We are in the ninth month of the year and we get wa­ter about eight times in Union (Vil­lage, Rio Claro). We asked WASA for wa­ter but they give we pipe and this is the prob­lem we hav­ing here this morn­ing.

“So vil­lagers come to­geth­er, no creed, no race and every­body mov­ing in one place and we come to stage a lit­tle road­block to make sure we get wa­ter on the pipeline.”

In a me­dia re­lease hours lat­er, WASA ad­vised cus­tomers in Ma­yaro that the pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply was be­ing re­stored.

WASA said there were sev­er­al dis­rup­tions that af­fect­ed the ro­ta­tion­al sched­ule to the area last week­end, in­clud­ing a planned dis­rup­tion at the Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant on Tues­day for main­te­nance works at the TCO Boost­er Sta­tion. That was pre­ced­ed by emer­gency re­pairs to two rup­tures on the 20-inch di­am­e­ter trans­mis­sion pipeline in the vicin­i­ty of LP277 Tabaquite Road, Rio Claro, on Sep­tem­ber 16 and 19.

The truck-borne ser­vice to the ar­eas was in­creased and a sup­ple­men­tal truck ser­vice is be­ing pro­vid­ed, with par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on cus­tomers at el­e­vat­ed points or at the ex­trem­i­ties of the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, WASA said.

The sup­ply ro­ta­tion is as fol­lows:

• Mile End - 19 to 21 Sep­tem­ber

• ↓Bal­a­ta, Mafek­ing, Cedar Grove - 21 to 22 Sep­tem­ber

• Cas­cadoux, Ker­na­ham - 22 to 23 Sep­tem­ber

• ↓Ra­bi­ta, Rest­house, Or­toire, Co­conut Grove - 23 to 24 Sep­tem­ber

• ↓Alex­is, Pan­han­dle, Solomon Street, Pe­ter Hill - 24 to 25 Sep­tem­ber

• St Ann’s, Be­go­rat - 25 to 26 Sep­tem­ber