RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

A group of res­i­dents gath­ered in Freeport yes­ter­day morn­ing and held a peace­ful demon­stra­tion over wa­ter woes in the Ca­roni Cen­tral con­stituen­cy.

The demon­stra­tion was held at Three-Roads Junc­tion in Freeport sup­port­ed by MP Arnold Ram and coun­cil­lor Anil Bal­li­ram.

The res­i­dents claim that they are left out of the wa­ter sched­ule by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and re­main with­out wa­ter for as much as nine con­sec­u­tive days.

The res­i­dents said to pur­chase wa­ter pri­vate­ly costs them be­tween $800 to $1000– a cost that is way too ex­pen­sive for them to af­ford at an av­er­age of a week­ly ba­sis.

The res­i­dents are call­ing on the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­salves to in­ter­vene. They are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing a signed pe­ti­tion to be de­liv­ered soon to his of­fice.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia, el­der­ly res­i­dent Haz­i­moon Mo­hammed said she has to get up some­times at 3 0’clock on morn­ings when wa­ter do come but be­cause of the qual­i­ty of wa­ter she has got­ten sick.

She said, “I have to get up 3 o’clock on morn­ings to full wa­ter and it is mud­dy wa­ter and some­times I have to wait two hours for that wa­ter to clear up then to full in the tanks. I have to buy wa­ter to drink be­cause I can­not drink that wa­ter. I get sick be­cause of that. I think it is mod­ern times that alyuh (re­fer­ring to WASA) get alyuh facts in place and just do what alyuh have to do and if alyuh can’t do alyuh work good just step down. We are very fed up in Ca­roni Cen­tral.”

Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Arnold Ram, in ad­dress­ing the few gath­ered, said he did pen a let­ter to WASA’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer re­gard­ing “the very grave sit­u­a­tion of a woe­ful lack of ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply.”

Ram not­ed that at present 95 per cent of his con­stituen­cy re­ceive a sup­ply once every 12 days and added that this was be­fore WASA sent out its dry sea­son sched­ule.

“We have no­ticed that they have con­ve­nient­ly left out sev­er­al ar­eas and we un­der­stand that some ar­eas close to the con­stituen­cy re­ceives wa­ter 24/7 eg. Bal­main. We are ask­ing why? Ad­di­tion­al­ly we have no­ticed based on your sched­ule that many parts of the gov­ern­ment con­trolled con­stituen­cies re­ceive a much more re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply,” Ram said.

“We are say­ing enough is enough. We can­not con­tin­ue with this mock­ery of a wa­ter sup­ply be­cause wa­ter is a ne­ces­si­ty to life and WASA can­not con­tin­ue to treat the con­stituents in this cal­lous man­ner,” he added.

Ram added that res­i­dents should not have to pay for the poor ser­vice and sug­gest­ed that they not have to pay for the days they are with­out a prop­er wa­ter sup­ply.

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WASA re­sponds

WASA said a se­nior team of of­fi­cials from the au­thor­i­ty, led by act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Sher­land Shep­pard, met with Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South Rudranath In­dars­ingh, along with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives and res­i­dents of the Cou­va South con­stituen­cy, at the au­thor­i­ty’s head Of­fice, St. Joseph on March 3 2022.

The meet­ing was held to dis­cuss the wa­ter sup­ply sched­ules and oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing cus­tomers in parts of the Cou­va South con­stituen­cy.

WASA said at the meet­ing, head of Op­er­a­tions South, Anand Jag­ger­nath, pre­sent­ed de­tails on the cur­rent source of sup­ply, pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem which ser­vices var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties with­in the Cou­va South con­stituen­cy.

He al­so out­lined the ex­ist­ing chal­lenge in main­tain­ing bal­ance be­tween the sup­ply and de­mand for wa­ter in the area, which led to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the cur­rent one in nine sched­ule.

Pro­duc­tion at the Freeport Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant is 2.6 mil­lion gal­lons per day (mgd), while the de­mand for the area is es­ti­mat­ed at 3.5 mgd. As a re­sult wa­ter from the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant is used to sup­ple­ment the sup­ply from the Freeport Plant. Con­se­quent­ly, re­duced pro­duc­tion at the Ca­roni fa­cil­i­ty due to the ef­fects of the Dry Sea­son, has im­pact­ed this sup­ple­men­tal sup­ply.

The au­thor­i­ty al­so not­ed that it was work­ing on gain­ing ac­cess to an­oth­er Well #6, which when re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed will fur­ther boost the amount of wa­ter avail­able for dis­tri­b­u­tion to ar­eas in the Cou­va South con­stituen­cy.

Apart from these mea­sures, the au­thor­i­ty said two pipeline projects cur­rent­ly await­ing fund­ing that will de­liv­er an in­creased vol­ume of wa­ter to the area from the Ca­roni sys­tem.