KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Frus­trat­ed Table­land res­i­dents say they will give the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) two weeks to im­prove their wa­ter sup­ply, af­ter Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Clyde El­der apol­o­gised for the long­stand­ing short­age dur­ing a vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day.

El­der, Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin and a WASA team vis­it­ed Robert Vil­lage fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s protest by res­i­dents over the lack of a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply. The of­fi­cials met with res­i­dents and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Har­ri­lal Ramb­ha­jan at his home, where dis­cus­sions fo­cused on the caus­es of the short­age and the steps be­ing planned to bring re­lief.

El­der said Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath, who is cur­rent­ly in the Unit­ed States, asked him to ac­com­pa­ny Ben­jamin to the area to ad­dress crit­i­cal and long­stand­ing wa­ter is­sues af­fect­ing res­i­dents. Ac­knowl­edg­ing the frus­tra­tion faced by cit­i­zens, El­der apol­o­gised to res­i­dents in Table­land and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sim­i­lar prob­lems.

“Cer­tain­ly, we apol­o­gise to the peo­ple, and not just in Table­land but through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go. They have had is­sues with the wa­ter sup­ply for quite some time. Those is­sues did not oc­cur in the last 10 months. Those is­sues were there for the last 10 years, if not more, and they have not been ad­dressed,” El­der said.

He said age­ing in­fra­struc­ture re­mains one of the ma­jor chal­lenges af­fect­ing sup­ply to the area. In ad­di­tion, a sec­tion of the wa­ter line pass­ing through the vil­lage was pre­vi­ous­ly con­demned af­ter land­slip ac­tiv­i­ty and road restora­tion works dam­aged the pipeline, forc­ing res­i­dents to re­ly on a truck-borne sup­ply. He ex­plained that the com­mu­ni­ty’s lo­ca­tion at the end of the dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work al­so makes it par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to dis­rup­tions caused by leaks along the line.

He said fund­ing from a sec­ond tranche of an In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank loan will sup­port in­fra­struc­ture up­grades in­tend­ed to ben­e­fit sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing Table­land. In the short term, WASA has com­mit­ted to in­creas­ing truck-borne de­liv­er­ies to af­fect­ed res­i­dents while crews con­tin­ue re­pair­ing leaks to im­prove pres­sure in the net­work.

Ben­jamin said wa­ter sup­ply ems have per­sist­ed for years across the con­stituen­cy, af­fect­ing com­mu­ni­ties such as Pla­tan­ite, Bar­rack­pore and St Mary’s in Moru­ga. She said about 75 per cent of the Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy ex­pe­ri­ences dis­rup­tions, large­ly due to land­slips that dam­age pipelines and in­ter­rupt the flow of wa­ter. She added that the area has been ear­marked for a tank farm that would im­prove wa­ter stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Ramb­ha­jan said he ap­pre­ci­at­ed the quick re­sponse from Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s protest, but warned that res­i­dents ex­pect to see im­prove­ments soon.

“So far, I am very sat­is­fied with what they are promis­ing. It is left to be seen if their promis­es ma­te­ri­alise, but know­ing me, if they do not ma­te­ri­alise, you will be back here again,” Ramb­ha­jan said.

Dur­ing the meet­ing with of­fi­cials, he re­quest­ed that WASA sup­ply about 2,400 gal­lons of wa­ter week­ly to meet the needs of his ex­tend­ed house­hold. He said res­i­dents are pre­pared to give au­thor­i­ties time to de­liv­er on their com­mit­ments, but warned that pa­tience is lim­it­ed.

“I am giv­ing them time through my MP. She and I have a close re­la­tion­ship. We will give them some time, and if noth­ing is put in place, we will have to high­light this prob­lem again.”

Ramb­ha­jan said res­i­dents are will­ing to wait up to two weeks to see whether the promised mea­sures lead to im­prove­ments.

“Yes, two weeks, be­cause this prob­lem needs to be ad­dressed. It can­not go on like that. I mean, we are pay­ing cit­i­zens. We are tax­pay­ers.”