Res­i­dents of Cen­tral who are the hard­est hit for wa­ter are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from an in­creased truck-borne ser­vice in the com­ing weeks.

This news came af­ter three MPs met with WASA of­fi­cials on Fri­day at WASA’s St Joseph head­quar­ters.

Ani­ta Haynes, the Tabaquite MP, along with the MPs for Ca­roni Cen­tral and Cou­va South met with Al­lan Poon King,-the WASA CEO, and his man­age­ment team, to look at short and long-term so­lu­tions. Haynes said for the past four months thou­sands of res­i­dents in these con­stituen­cies have been get­ting a lim­it­ed sup­ply of pipe-borne wa­ter and have been forced to wait sev­er­al days to get the sup­ply.

Haynes said WASA has promised to re­duce the wait­ing time for a truck-borne sup­ply. She said she plans to ap­peal to the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to get more re­sources to the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to in­crease the cor­po­ra­tion’s wa­ter truck­ing ca­pac­i­ty. The CT­TRC has on­ly one wa­ter truck that can de­liv­er be­tween three to five loads dai­ly.

How­ev­er, Haynes said bu­reau­cra­cy was slow­ing down the de­liv­ery process at WASA. “We are deal­ing with a Min­istry of Fi­nance that sees it fit to dish out a small amount and hop­ing that we will scrape by. Wa­ter is an es­sen­tial ser­vice.” Haynes said WASA was do­ing up­grades to sev­er­al boost­er sta­tions. She said WASA would be sup­ply­ing the MPs with the var­i­ous medi­um and long-term time lines soon.

WASA re­sponds

In a re­lease, WASA ad­vised cus­tomers in parts of cen­tral Trinidad and in par­tic­u­lar the Clax­ton Bay and Cou­va ar­eas, who have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a dis­rup­tion in their nor­mal sup­ply, that every ef­fort is be­ing made to rem­e­dy this sit­u­a­tion.

The re­lease stat­ed, “These ar­eas are ser­viced from the au­thor­i­ty’s Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant (WTP) and the Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant. How­ev­er, there have been pe­ri­od­ic dis­rup­tions at both fa­cil­i­ties in re­cent weeks that have im­pact­ed the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of sup­ply to these and oth­er ar­eas. Both fa­cil­i­ties are present­ly ful­ly op­er­a­tional and the sup­ply to af­fect­ed ar­eas is nor­mal­is­ing, with all im­pact­ed cus­tomers ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a sup­ply by Sun­day De­cem­ber 20, 2020.

“The au­thor­i­ty al­so ac­knowl­edges that it has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is­sues with the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of ser­vice to the Cal­cut­ta and Freeport ar­eas, which are sup­plied by the Freeport WTP. Cur­rent­ly, there is a deficit in the sup­ply to these ar­eas and the so­lu­tions to ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion re­quire cap­i­tal works. While fund­ing is sourced to ex­e­cute re­quired works, sup­plies from ad­ja­cent sys­tems will be used to sup­ple­ment ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion.

“In re­la­tion to parts of south east Trinidad in­clud­ing Biche, Stone­bright and La Sa­vanne, Ma­yaro, re­pairs to leak­ing pipelines were com­plet­ed to­day (De­cem­ber 18) and sup­plies rein­tro­duced in­to the pipeline net­work in these com­mu­ni­ties.

“It is pro­ject­ed that af­fect­ed cus­tomers will re­ceive a pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply by Sun­day (De­cem­ber 20).

“The au­thor­i­ty wish­es to as­sure cus­tomers that it is work­ing to reg­u­larise the pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply to all im­pact­ed ar­eas at the ear­li­est and con­tin­ues to li­aise with par­lia­men­tary and lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in re­la­tion to pro­vid­ing a sup­ple­men­tary truck borne wa­ter sup­ply to cus­tomers where nec­es­sary.”