Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Two teams have been es­tab­lished to help solve the wa­ter woes of com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad by giv­ing WASA’s Board of Com­mis­sion­ers greater over­sight over man­ag­ing the re­gions.

The news came from Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day, hours af­ter res­i­dents of Union Vil­lage, Rio Claro took to the streets in fiery protest over al­most a month of dry taps.

The com­mu­ni­ties un­der the mi­cro­scope are Moru­ga, Ma­yaro, Freeport, Pe­nal, Ari­ma, Mal­abar, Cleaver, La Flo­ras­sainte, Arou­ca, and Va­len­cia.

In a What­sapp mes­sage, Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia the chal­lenges for these ar­eas are be­cause of the de­clin­ing vol­umes of wa­ter from the Hol­lis and Navet Dams due to dry sea­son con­di­tions. How­ev­er, he said this is not the on­ly fault at play.

“As min­is­ter, I am not hap­py with the man­ner in which those two re­gions are be­ing man­aged and the com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy to keep cus­tomers and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives up­dat­ed. De­spite the chal­lenges, there is no rea­son why some of these com­mu­ni­ties should be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the chal­lenges they are fac­ing. It’s clear to me that the area man­agers are not do­ing enough to man­age the re­sources and are fail­ing in terms of their com­mu­ni­ca­tion and out­reach to their cus­tomers,” he said.

“The com­mit­tees were put in place to en­sure that all strate­gies to ame­lio­rate the im­pact on cus­tomers and for there to be a seam­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel with the im­pact­ed com­mu­ni­ties. As you are aware, just last week, we took a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion to re­lax all re­stric­tions that pre­vent cus­tomers from get­ting ac­cess to truck-borne sup­ply, par­tic­u­lar­ly, to cus­tomers who re­side in ar­eas that get wa­ter un­der 2 days per week.”

He said the min­istry is now mon­i­tor­ing the man­age­ment of these re­gions “be­cause while we are de­ploy­ing re­sources, some re­gions are fail­ing in terms of their man­age­ment.”

He said To­ba­go is one of the re­gions that is do­ing ex­treme­ly well so far.

“So all re­gion­al man­agers are ex­pect­ed to get out in the com­mu­ni­ties, con­tact their cus­tomers and en­sure that every­one has ac­cess to a rea­son­able sup­ply of wa­ter,” he said.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray said the protest be­gan around 5.30 am and an hour lat­er, the res­i­dents re­ceived a wa­ter sup­ply. He said while he does not con­done such acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, he un­der­stands the res­i­dents’ plight.