Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said this year 18 new wells will be drilled in the coun­try which would lead to an im­prove­ment in the sup­ply of wa­ter.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the sod turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for three wells in Ma­yaro yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les dis­missed claims of po­lit­i­cal and racial vic­tim­i­sa­tion in ar­eas that do not re­ceive an ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply.

He said that even if wa­ter pro­duc­tion is in­creased, but in­fra­struc­ture is not im­proved, then five years from now there will be com­plaints about sup­ply.

Gon­za­les said in ad­di­tion to the 18 new wells, six oth­ers will be brought to pro­duc­tion un­der the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank Pro­gramme. He said plans are al­so afoot to re­fur­bish ma­jor wa­ter treat­ment plants in un­der­served and un­served com­mu­ni­ties.

“The rea­son why that is hap­pen­ing is be­cause I know what it means to catch your tail for wa­ter,” he said. The min­is­ter added that a wa­ter treat­ment plant would al­so be built in Ma­yaro, and there’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty that three more wells could al­so be built in the fu­ture.

Com­mend­ing Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray for his dig­ni­fied ap­proach in lob­by­ing for wa­ter for his con­stituents, the min­is­ter said Ma­yaro was a UNC area “catch­ing their tail for wa­ter”. But he said they were al­so go­ing to be­gin drilling wells in Pa­lo Seco and Cara­pal, which are hard-core PNM ar­eas.

“The rea­son why I am say­ing this, is be­cause it is very im­por­tant to let the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go know that when it comes to the ba­sics in life it doesn’t not mat­ter whether or not you are black, whether or not you are white, whether or not you are East In­di­an... whether or not you are UNC, PNM, NJAC, it still have NJAC, NTA what have you,” Gon­za­les said.

He as­sured Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing hard to im­prove the wa­ter sup­ply every­where in the coun­try.

“We have com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go get­ting wa­ter every nine days and we must un­der­take and at­tack it in the most vig­or­ous man­ner to bring about the nec­es­sary so­lu­tions to im­prove the sup­ply of wa­ter so we could erad­i­cate any wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule that is be­low 24/2 or be­low 24/3 and that is the rea­son why we are here to­day,” he said.

Mean­while, the MP for the area Paray ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the min­is­ter’s com­mit­ment to ful­fill­ing promis­es.

He said en­sur­ing a con­tin­u­ous wa­ter sup­ply, 24 hours for 3 days a week, would not on­ly meet so­cial needs but al­so pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the lo­cal econ­o­my of Ma­yaro.