Jesse Ramdeo

Res­i­dents in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in Ma­yaro staged a demon­stra­tion yes­ter­day, de­mand­ing an end to their wa­ter woes.

Those af­fect­ed from ar­eas such as Ra­bi­ta Av­enue, Jar­dine Road and Radix Vil­lage told Guardian Me­dia that in some in­stances, they have been left with dry taps for up to four weeks.

The res­i­dents said the chal­lenges ex­pe­ri­enced with their pipe-born wa­ter sup­ply were trick­ling down to every as­pect of their lives.

Dami­an Jack, a res­i­dent, said, “We need wa­ter. It is three weeks I haven’t had wa­ter. I wear­ing dirty clothes in this day and age. My son can’t even go to school to­day be­cause we don’t have wa­ter to wash his uni­form, we don’t even have wa­ter to drink be­cause rain is not even falling, so what we have to do is go by the beach, go by the riv­er.’”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Res­i­dent Neal Bal­los­ingh, said not on­ly has there been an ab­sence of pipeborne wa­ter, but al­so no ex­pla­na­tion from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) sur­round­ing the mat­ter.

He said, “No­body is giv­ing us any in­for­ma­tion as to why. Speak­ing to these peo­ple here in charge of the wa­ter, they’re say­ing on­ly the tech­ni­cal su­per­vi­sor and the man­ag­er will be able to say when next we will get wa­ter.”

The res­i­dents al­so con­tend­ed that de­spite the con­stant dis­rup­tion in ser­vice, they con­tin­ue to be billed by WASA, a move they have la­belled as un­fair.

Vil­lager Roseann Williams said, “Last week we did not have any wa­ter. I have four tanks and all were emp­ty. My house­hold has sev­en peo­ple, we are not sup­posed to be out of wa­ter, we have our bills to pay, if you want us to pay our bills reg­u­lar­ly, we should have a reg­u­lar sup­ply of wa­ter.” Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed a se­nior of­fi­cial of WASA who as­sured the con­cerns raised by the res­i­dents will be looked in­to.

Mean­while, res­i­dents im­pact­ed by un­em­ploy­ment in the area al­so reaf­firmed their po­si­tion not to stand down from their de­mands for more job op­por­tu­ni­ties to be cre­at­ed.

Natasha Corn­wall said, “The peo­ple are not hear­ing our cry here.”

Re­cent­ly, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the area, Rush­ton Paray, said he ob­served what he de­scribed as bru­tal signs of un­em­ploy­ment every­where.

Paray’s com­ment was in re­sponse to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s rev­e­la­tion that Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice da­ta in­di­cat­ed that this coun­try cur­rent­ly has full em­ploy­ment.