SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Hours af­ter block­ing the streets of Cas­tara, To­ba­go, to stage a protest demon­stra­tion, the dis­grun­tled res­i­dents of the small coastal vil­lage had their wa­ter sup­plied turned on.

On Mon­day dur­ing the pre-dawn hours, vil­lagers blocked sev­er­al ar­eas of the North­side Road de­mand­ing that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) give them a reg­u­lar sup­ply. The com­mu­ni­ty had been with­out wa­ter for a week. Vil­lagers said the lack of wa­ter was chas­ing away the hand­ful of tourists trick­ling in­to Cas­tara.

Live­ly George, a pop­u­lar vil­lager, said pri­or to wa­ter be­ing locked off for the past week, the vil­lage had had an er­rat­ic sup­ply.  George said he was asleep when the noise of the demon­stra­tion woke him up. He told Guardian Me­dia that WASA is the prob­lem.

"You can't blame ad­min­is­tra­tion, whether is a PNM, a UNC, a DAC, a PDP,” he as­sert­ed.  “WASA is play­ing the fool." 

George is con­cerned that the wa­ter au­thor­i­ty may shut off sup­plies lat­er in the day to pe­nalise res­i­dents for their protest demon­stra­tion. He said WASA is yet to show the com­mit­ment demon­strat­ed by T&TEC who he said re­spond­ed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly to re­turn sup­plies.

"You tell WASA, and they nev­er both­er with it," he said.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said he was not sur­prised that the vil­lagers demon­strat­ed.  

Au­gus­tine said he con­tact­ed WASA who as­sured him that re­pairs would be done to the Au­thor­i­ty’s Par­rot Hall Boost­er Sta­tion, and that sup­plies would re­turn to nor­mal lat­er on Mon­day.

The THA Chief Sec­re­tary ex­plained the THA does not de­liv­er truck borne wa­ter—un­like re­gion­al bod­ies in Trinidad—and WASA un­der­takes all wa­ter truck­ing op­er­a­tions on the is­land.

He said he had been ap­peal­ing to WASA for the past three weeks to have the ser­vice re­stored.