The Op­po­si­tion has com­mend­ed its mem­bers of Par­lia­ment for bring­ing pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment, which it be­lieves was the re­saons for the halt­ing of the dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve.

The fol­low­ing is a state­ment by the UNC.

The UNC com­mends our Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, Sad­dam Ho­sein, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Van­dana Mo­hit, Arnold Ram, and Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, in ad­di­tion to the many cit­i­zens who voiced their ob­jec­tions on so­cial me­dia and else­where, for pres­sur­ing WASA to halt its cru­el dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve dur­ing lock­down and pan­dem­ic.

If the UNC did not raise its voice, the PNM would have con­tin­ued its pro­gramme of lock­ing fam­i­lies in their homes from 7pm on Fri­day, for vir­tu­al­ly the en­tire week­end, with­out a sup­ply of wa­ter. No­tably, this dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve was on­ly hap­pen­ing to res­i­dents in Ch­agua­nas, San Juan and Barataria, ar­eas rep­re­sent­ed by UNC Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment.

These ac­tions by WASA con­sti­tute the most in­hu­mane tyran­ny, and cru­el­ty be­yond be­lief. Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les and WASA’s Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man Lennox Sealy saw noth­ing wrong when ob­jec­tions were made by UNC MPs. They dis­par­aged the MPs’ in­ter­ven­tions as “typ­i­cal UNC be­hav­iour”, and dou­bled down on WASA’s ac­tions in me­dia in­ter­views, in­clud­ing on Fri­day morn­ing on TV6’s Morn­ing Edi­tion. There was no in­di­ca­tion that they saw any prob­lem, and they con­tin­ued with their heart­less pro­gramme.

When asked in the Sen­ate, the PNM Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, Clarence Ramb­harat, cold­heart­ed­ly and fla­grant­ly re­fused to an­swer Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s ques­tion on the ef­fect of the WASA dis­con­nec­tions on sani­ti­sa­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

The UNC con­tin­ued ap­ply­ing pres­sure to the mat­ter and rais­ing pub­lic aware­ness. Mar­vin Gon­za­les was cor­rect that this was “typ­i­cal UNC be­hav­iour”. The UNC is al­ways com­pas­sion­ate to­wards cit­i­zens and acts ac­cord­ing­ly.

On the oth­er hand, dis­con­nect­ing fam­i­lies from their wa­ter sup­ply, threat­en­ing to seize their homes, lock­ing them down for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48 hours from Fri­day at 7pm to Mon­day at 5am, not al­low­ing so-called “non-es­sen­tial” house­hold heads from earn­ing an in­come to pay their wa­ter bills (in fact, ar­rest­ing and im­pris­on­ing them if they at­tempt to do so), all dur­ing a pan­dem­ic when wash­ing hands and main­tain­ing a clean en­vi­ron­ment is cru­cial to sav­ing lives in this coun­try, is TYP­I­CAL PNM BE­HAV­IOUR. Ab­solute­ly sick­en­ing and dis­gust­ing.

Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Lennox Sealy should hang their heads in shame.

Thank God that the UNC con­tin­ues to fight for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, or else one would shud­der to think what more the PNM would be al­lowed to get away with.