Gail Alexan­der

In or­der to min­imise the im­pact of dry sea­son con­di­tions, all Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty cus­tomers who re­ceive a sched­uled pipe borne sup­ply of two days or less per week, can now ac­cess truck-borne wa­ter at no cost un­til June, says Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

Gon­za­les con­firmed this in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, where UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh was evict­ed from Par­lia­ment for five min­utes af­ter clash­ing with Gon­za­les on wa­ter is­sues.

This oc­curred when Gon­za­les an­swered In­dars­ingh’s queries on the wa­ter sup­ply for Cal­cut­ta Nos. 1, 2, 3 and oth­er sur­round­ing vil­lages be­ing sub­ject­ed to a one in every nine-day wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule.

Gon­za­les said a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion was tak­en that where there was need to ad­just wa­ter sched­ules to im­pose more re­stric­tive con­di­tions in light of chang­ing sup­ply con­di­tions, “... No ad­just­ments would be made to sched­ules in ar­eas in re­ceipt of a lev­el of ser­vice of 24/3 and un­der. This in­cludes ar­eas in Cou­va South, which re­ceive a one in every nine-day wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule.”

“How­ev­er, ar­eas with more con­sis­tent and reg­u­lar sup­ply may ex­pe­ri­ence some cur­tail­ment to al­low for more even dis­tri­b­u­tion of wa­ter,” Gon­za­les added, al­so not­ing new wells be­ing drilled in the ar­eas.

Gon­za­les said the sit­u­a­tion was be­yond WASA’s con­trol, as De­sal­cott’s re­duced ca­pac­i­ty al­so af­fect­ed many ar­eas, but not­ed work was be­ing done with De­sal­cott to pro­vide Cou­va South with a more re­li­able sup­ply.

In­dars­ingh claimed WASA had col­lapsed un­der Gon­za­les’ lead­er­ship, and asked if he was sat­is­fied with that. Gon­za­les said WASA had not col­lapsed but the “UNC has col­lapsed” and In­dars­ingh’s “pen­chant for bac­cha­nal and con­fu­sion has col­lapsed.”

In­dars­ingh re­tort­ed, “In­com­pe­tent! This isn’t bac­cha­nal ...!”

In­dars­ingh was re­buked by House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George, who re­quest­ed he de­sist, and amid his con­tin­u­ing protests, asked him to take a “lit­tle five-minute walk out­side and come back in­side.”

She not­ed he had put his mi­cro­phone on de­lib­er­ate­ly to be heard.

In­dars­ingh de­mand­ed, “I’ll leave the Cham­ber but un­der what Stand­ing Or­der?”

An­nisette-George, say­ing she was sure he didn’t mean that, again asked him to leave.

Still protest­ing, In­dars­ingh left with an­oth­er warn­ing, but re­turned af­ter five min­utes to present an­oth­er query to Gon­za­les on dry sea­son wa­ter sup­ply sched­ules.

Gon­za­les not­ed that at the on­set of the 2023 dry sea­son, T&T ex­pe­ri­enced high­er than nor­mal lev­els of rain­fall, as­sist­ing reser­voir lev­els to re­main close to av­er­age in the first three months.

“There­fore, it wasn’t nec­es­sary to im­ple­ment wa­ter re­stric­tion sched­ules then. How­ev­er, now, as the dry sea­son en­ters its peak, reser­voir lev­els have be­gun to de­cline be­low long-term av­er­ages, par­tic­u­lar­ly at Hol­lis and Navet, with lev­els falling to 42 per cent and 51 per cent re­spec­tive­ly, as com­pared with 58 per cent and 63 per cent. “

With WASA’s dry sea­son sup­ply sched­ules on, Gon­za­les added, “To min­imise the im­pact of dry sea­son con­di­tions on WASA’s cus­tomers, a de­ci­sion has been made that for the re­main­der of the dry sea­son—un­til end of June—all do­mes­tic cus­tomers, who re­ceive a sched­uled pipe borne sup­ply of two days or less per week, can place a re­quest for a truck-borne wa­ter sup­ply, with all con­di­tions waived for same.

“No mat­ter their fi­nan­cial stand­ing with the au­thor­i­ty, all do­mes­tic cus­tomers will have ac­cess to a truck-borne ser­vice at no cost to them.”

Truck-borne ser­vice can be re­quest­ed through the WASA Ser­vices App avail­able via the Play Store or Ap­ple store; or the Cus­tomer’s Por­tal avail­able on the Au­thor­i­ty’s web­site: www.wasa.gov.tt. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, cus­tomers re­quir­ing di­rect as­sis­tance or fur­ther in­for­ma­tion can con­tact WASA’s Cus­tomer Call Cen­tre toll free - 800-4420/26.