Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at­tached to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) have laid charges against three per­sons, for the il­le­gal ab­strac­tion of wa­ter from WASA’s wa­ter­works sys­tem, as well as il­le­gal tam­per­ing with a fire hy­drant, con­trary to Sec­tion 6 of the Wa­ter Works Act 54:41.

The ac­cused of Bagatelle Road, Diego Mar­tin; Es­pany­ol Street, Diego Mar­tin and Fa­ti­ma Trace, Paramin, Mar­aval, have each been served with sum­mons to ap­pear at the Port-of-Spain Third Mag­is­trates Court on 24th May 2019, to an­swer to the charges.

If found guilty, the penal­ty un­der these charges range from $1,500 to $3,000 or six months im­pris­on­ment.

WASA says it has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to in­ten­si­fy ac­tion against per­son found to be il­le­gal­ly ab­stract­ing wa­ter from or tam­per­ing with its wa­ter­works sys­tems, in light of the cur­rent harsh Dry Sea­son, as well as the 28th Feb­ru­ary 2019 end to its amnesty for reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of il­le­gal con­nec­tions or ac­counts which were wrong­ly clas­si­fied.