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Monday, February 17, 2025

Medics in COVID fight have no water at home

by

Radhica De SIlva
1781 days ago
20200403
Central resident Cherry Ramdath shows the bundles of clothes which are piled up because she has no water to wash. Central is one of the communities experiencing distress for water even as the country tries to keep environments clean in the fight against COVID-19.

Central resident Cherry Ramdath shows the bundles of clothes which are piled up because she has no water to wash. Central is one of the communities experiencing distress for water even as the country tries to keep environments clean in the fight against COVID-19.

COURTESY XHERRY RAMDATH

They have been risk­ing their lives car­ing for pa­tients in the midst of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, yet, when they re­turn home, two Cen­tral medics have no wa­ter to wash their hands—an act world med­ical ex­perts say is one of the best mea­sures to pre­vent the spread of the virus.

The doc­tors, who are op­er­ate at one of the coun­try’s med­ical hubs, but whose names have been with­held to pro­tect their iden­ti­ties, have been suf­fer­ing be­cause of a wa­ter short­age in their com­mu­ni­ty. A rup­tured wa­ter main has left more than 100 house­holds with dry taps.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Thurs­day, a rel­a­tive Sharon Per­sad (not her re­al name), said they were ter­ri­fied that if they do not get wa­ter soon, they will be un­able to pro­tect them­selves from ill­ness and pos­si­bly death.

“In my house­hold we have two doc­tors and we can­not even have wa­ter to wash their scrubs. When they come home we have to take their scrubs and bag it. They leave their shoes out­side. We do not have wa­ter to wash clothes. We are us­ing a lot of hand sani­tis­er be­cause we do not want to waste the wa­ter. Right now we are down to one rim of wa­ter. Three tanks are dry,” she said.

Per­sad said res­i­dents had not re­ceived wa­ter for three weeks and when they did it came on­ly for two hours.

“Peo­ple in the low­er ar­eas got some but not us,” she added.

But the doc­tors and their fam­i­ly are not alone at this time, as oth­er parts of the coun­try have al­so been suf­fer­ing for a reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply at a time when keep­ing sur­round­ings clean are es­sen­tial to the fight against COVID-19.

In a state­ment Thurs­day, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty con­firmed that parts of Cen­tral Trinidad would be with­out wa­ter last night be­cause the au­thor­i­ty had to car­ry out re­pair work on a 16-inch trans­mis­sion pipeline in Car­oli­na. WASA said the ar­eas that would be af­fect­ed by a dis­rup­tion in sup­ply of at least 12 hours were Wind­sor Park, Car­oli­na, Bal­main and Mil­ton.

MP for Cou­va South Rudranath In­dars­ingh al­so said yes­ter­day that con­stituents in Mil­ton, Car­oli­na, Bal­main Gar­dens, Vi­o­let Dri­ve and Cal­cut­ta Nos 1, 2 and 3 have been com­plain­ing about a wa­ter prob­lem for weeks. In­dars­ingh said he had writ­ten to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte seek­ing re­lief. He said re­gion­al man­agers from WASA al­so in­formed him that there was a prob­lem with the Dow Vil­lage boost­er pump.

Cen­tral res­i­dent Shal­i­ma Ramkissoon said her com­mu­ni­ty had been hav­ing con­stant wa­ter woes and they had been forced to buy wa­ter.

“We are see­ing prob­lems for too long. ... I don’t know what they try­ing to do now. It is an area where plen­ty poor peo­ple live and if peo­ple do not have wa­ter to clean they will be at risk,” Ramkissoon said.

Lawrence John said his wife had been wash­ing clothes at her el­der­ly sis­ter’s home in Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas, for the past two weeks but with the en­hanced quar­an­tine mea­sures they could not do so again be­cause both the sis­ter and her hus­band were at high risk to con­tract COVID-19 be­cause of their age and health is­sues, He said his kitchen gar­den had died.

“We were us­ing kitchen wa­ter to keep them alive but now we can­not even wa­ter them. I added a 400 gal­lon tank and sev­en plas­tic bar­rels, the lat­ter for the plants, but was not able to fill them up cause the wa­ter nev­er came back,” he said.

An­oth­er Cen­tral res­i­dent, Cher­ry Ram­dath said she had paid $200 for a tank of wa­ter.

“It is not right. They must do some­thing about this,” she said.

COVID-19


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