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Friday, July 4, 2025

Water woes in Belmont and St Ann’s

by

1407 days ago
20210826
Layan Hill, Belmont, residents protest yesterday with empty water bottles to highlight water problems  in their community

Layan Hill, Belmont, residents protest yesterday with empty water bottles to highlight water problems in their community

NICOLE DRAYTON

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has vowed to have ex­ec­u­tives from the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) ac­count to the pub­lic to­day for wa­ter is­sues through­out the coun­try.

This promise came yes­ter­day af­ter Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the min­is­ter for com­ments on com­plaints made by res­i­dents of Bel­mont and St Ann’s about dry taps for the past sev­er­al weeks.

At Layan Hill, Bel­mont, a small group of res­i­dents gath­ered yes­ter­day, clutch­ing emp­ty plas­tic bot­tles as they re­count­ed the many strug­gles their com­mu­ni­ty has faced over the past 60 years for an ad­e­quate pipe-borne sup­ply of wa­ter.

Earl Mark, 69, said he had reached the point of frus­tra­tion over the on­go­ing is­sues. He said over the years, res­i­dents have com­plained to their var­i­ous Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and coun­cil­lors but the is­sue has nev­er been re­solved.

“Right now, the one rep­re­sent­ing us is Stu­art Young. He knows the prob­lem, he does noth­ing for us, three weeks now no wa­ter on the hill, my tanks emp­ty. You mak­ing re­quests to WASA, they say make a re­quest. Look, I have my re­quest num­ber here. Three weeks now I mak­ing this re­quest and no wa­ter com­ing, no trucks, noth­ing com­ing,” Mark said.

He said res­i­dents of Layan Hill usu­al­ly don’t stage protests to get is­sues re­solved but did not know what else to do.

“Protest­ing ain’t make no sense be­cause in 1993 we have a protest down by the Twin Tow­ers and since that noth­ing still ain’t hap­pen,” he said.

Mark said he had been told WASA’s in­fra­struc­ture could not pump wa­ter up the steep hill.

“The wa­ter com­ing from over the hill. When it reach halfway, it can­not go up, they say the pump break­down, some­times they say they have one pump,” he said.

He said all he want­ed was for their po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to as­sist in find­ing a so­lu­tion to the wa­ter woes plagu­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Jef­frey Sker­ritt said he is fed up.

“In the pan­dem­ic, they say wash your hands but we clothes can’t wash, we can’t bathe, we can’t flush. We are in a mess. We want to get this straight­ened out, it’s not just to­day, it’s years now,” Sker­ritt said.

Now 73, Sker­ritt re­called car­ry­ing wa­ter from the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to his home in his younger days. He said at that time, his chil­dren were ba­bies.

“Now my chil­dren are big and I still tot­ing wa­ter,” he lament­ed.

His neigh­bour, Kei­th Lewis, had mem­o­ries of ac­com­pa­ny­ing his grand­par­ents, then his par­ents, to get wa­ter and now, still hav­ing to fetch wa­ter now. Lewis said he and his neigh­bours make sure to pay their wa­ter bills on time so over­due bills are not the prob­lem.

“It is ad­van­tage. Why are we pay­ing a bill and we are not get­ting the ser­vice for it? It doesn’t make sense, and we re­al­ly fed up now. We keep pay­ing these peo­ple over and over, we re­al­ly need wa­ter now, we fed up, we re­al­ly can’t take no more,” Lewis said.

Over the hills in St Ann’s, res­i­dent Charisse Thavenot said it has been 16 days since she last had a pipe-borne sup­ply of wa­ter. She said this is­sue af­fects res­i­dents of low­er, mid­dle and up­per Fondes Aman­des.

Try­ing to get an up­date from WASA has proved even more frus­trat­ing, Thavenot said.

“Many times you are on hold and you don’t get any re­sponse, when you do get through, we’ve now been ad­vised by more than one source that it could now be pos­si­bly a week or two, with the dam­age done by the re­cent floods,” she said.

Thavenot said res­i­dents have re­sort­ed to pay­ing for pri­vate wa­ter trucks to bring wa­ter to their homes which can cost be­tween $600 to $700 per tank.

But the con­cerns ex­pressed in both com­mu­ni­ties are not unique.

Guardian Me­dia post­ed a ques­tion to its so­cial me­dia plat­forms yes­ter­day ask­ing users whether they were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing wa­ter prob­lems in their com­mu­ni­ties.

The post got more than 1,300 com­ments with many com­plain­ing of hav­ing no wa­ter for weeks at a time. Sev­er­al com­ments from Ari­ma res­i­dents stat­ed parts of the Ari­ma Bye Pass Road had not had a pipe-borne sup­ply since De­cem­ber 2019. Many users al­so com­plained of be­ing un­able to ac­cess WASA’s truck borne sup­ply.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day evening for com­ment, Gon­za­les said he is aware of the is­sues in Fondes Aman­des but not of those in Layan Hill.

When the con­cerns raised on so­cial me­dia were brought to his at­ten­tion, Gon­za­les said he would man­date WASA ex­ec­u­tives to hold a press con­fer­ence to­day to ex­plain to the na­tion why its wa­ter sup­ply is so ir­reg­u­lar.


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