Leah So­rias

Chair­man of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) Dr Shafeek Sul­tan-Khan has or­dered an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a Guardian front-page sto­ry yes­ter­day of a WASA truck pump­ing drink­ing wa­ter in­to the swim­ming pool of a pri­vate res­i­dence in West­moor­ings. In a re­lease sent at 5 pm yes­ter­day, WASA's gen­er­al man­ag­er, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Ellen Lewis, said the au­thor­i­ty con­sid­ered the sit­u­a­tion very dis­turb­ing. She main­tained that ini­tial re­ports stat­ed that the truck-borne wa­ter was re­quest­ed for con­struc­tion pur­pos­es.

"The re­port al­so in­di­cates that the build­ing is, in fact, un­der con­struc­tion and ex­ten­sive ren­o­va­tion and not hab­it­able," Lewis said. She as­sured the pub­lic that the mat­ter was be­ing viewed "with the se­ri­ous­ness it de­serves" and that if WASA poli­cies and re­stric­tion mea­sures were found to be breached, ap­pro­pri­ate dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion will be tak­en. A pho­to­graph of the WASA truck dis­cov­ered pump­ing the wa­ter in­to the pool lo­cat­ed at Colum­bus Cir­cle, West­moor­ings, was tak­en by a res­i­dent of the neigh­bour­ing high-rise La Riv­iera apart­ment on Thurs­day night.

Two Guardian em­ploy­ees, tipped off by the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, vis­it­ed the scene and saw for them­selves what was tak­ing place. Af­ter re­al­is­ing they were be­ing pho­tographed and filmed, the WASA em­ploy­ees im­me­di­ate­ly dis­con­nect­ed the hose from the wa­ter truck and drove off. Less than five min­utes lat­er, a van­load of po­lice­men ar­rived on the scene, with one say­ing that they had been told of two sus­pi­cious char­ac­ters in the neigh­bour­hood. The in­ci­dent oc­curred just three days af­ter WASA an­nounced that T&T's wa­ter re­serves was at one-third of what they should be. It al­so fol­lows weeks of pleas by the Au­thor­i­ty for the pub­lic to con­serve wa­ter.

Wa­ter-us­age re­stric­tions were of­fi­cial­ly put in place on Feb­ru­ary 2. These in­clud­ed the ban on the use of hoses, sprin­klers, wa­ter foun­tains and pow­er wash­ers. WASA said those found breach­ing these re­stric­tions, would be charged. In yes­ter­day's re­lease Lewis said: "It is sig­nif­i­cant that as a con­se­quence of the con­sci­en­tious­ness of many cit­i­zens that WASA has been able to pro­vide a near nor­mal ser­vice even in this very harsh dry sea­son."