Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha@wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Mon Re­pos/Navet coun­cil­lor Nigel Cout­ti­er claims the ar­son at­tack in which two large wa­ter tanks at the HDC Ol­era Heights Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment were de­stroyed was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

In the in­ci­dent on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, tyres were placed near the com­mu­ni­ty’s tank farm and set on fire, de­stroy­ing the two 3,500-gal­lon tanks were de­stroyed. The trans­mis­sion and feed­er lines that sup­ply wa­ter to apart­ments with­in the de­vel­op­ment were slight­ly dam­aged.

Cout­ti­er, a PNM rep­re­sen­ta­tive, said there was no protest over wa­ter and the fire was de­lib­er­ate­ly set.

“I’m not sure what would have caused that more than pol­i­tics be­cause things are in the mak­ing (to im­prove the wa­ter sup­ply),” he said.

He ad­mit­ted that there have been on­go­ing wa­ter prob­lems in the de­vel­op­ment and San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi has been work­ing on re­solv­ing those is­sues.

“They re­cent­ly in­stalled two new pumps and there is work in the pipeline to in­crease the tank farm with­in six weeks or two months,” he said.

Cout­ti­er said sev­er­al res­i­dents, in­clud­ing el­der­ly per­sons and chil­dren, were af­fect­ed by the thick black smoke from the fire.

“So there is no way pos­si­ble any­one can con­vince me this was some­thing that was done to high­light wa­ter. This was some­thing done for their own self­ish ways,” he said.

Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is con­demned the at­tack and said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was im­mi­nent. She al­so warned that those found guilty “will be pros­e­cut­ed for de­stroy­ing Gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty and charged with oth­er crim­i­nal of­fence(s) gov­ern­ing sim­i­lar at­tacks.”

Re­pairs start­ed on Sat­ur­day and yes­ter­day an HDC crew re­turned to the site to re­move and re­place the dam­aged tanks.

HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane said in a me­dia re­lease that burn­ing the tanks can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the lim­it­ed wa­ter sup­ply cur­rent­ly be­ing dis­trib­uted to the com­mu­ni­ty and ex­ac­er­bate the wa­ter is­sues for all res­i­dents.

The HDC as­sured that its tank farms are ful­ly op­er­a­tional and res­i­dents re­ceived a pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply on Mon­day. Due to mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed by WASA to deal with low wa­ter lev­els caused by the harsh dry sea­son, the de­vel­op­ment is cur­rent­ly on a wa­ter sched­ule.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to the in­ci­dent.