Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Of­fi­cials from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) have dis­con­nect­ed an il­le­gal wa­ter con­nec­tion re­port­ed­ly run­ning to the Suarez Cir­cus in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

In a video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, WASA work­ers are seen re­mov­ing hoses from a WASA well in the Sa­van­nah. The video then pans over to the cir­cus just a few me­tres away. 

“This is where we’re col­lect­ing the hose, putting it in the van from the il­le­gal con­nec­tion from the cir­cus,” a voice is heard say­ing in the video.  “This is what we see here, we dis­con­nect, we mov­ing with the hose as ev­i­dence.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the cir­cus, we met two work­ers who said el Jefe (the boss) wouldn’t be at the site for an­oth­er two hours. But when the work­ers were asked if they had wa­ter at the site, they sim­ply replied, “No.”

We were un­able to speak with any se­nior of­fi­cial as­so­ci­at­ed with the cir­cus to find about the il­le­gal con­nec­tion al­leged­ly sup­ply­ing wa­ter to the en­ter­tain­ment event or if they had knowl­edge about the claims.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les con­firmed he or­dered the il­le­gal con­nec­tion re­moved. When con­tact­ed, he di­rect­ed us to a post on his of­fi­cial Face­book page which said, “LAW­LESS­NESS MUST NOT BE TOL­ER­AT­ED AT ANY LEV­EL (sic). This morn­ing, I was in­formed by a mem­ber of the pub­lic of an il­le­gal con­nec­tion from a WASA well lead­ing to a tem­po­rary es­tab­lish­ment at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah (Cir­cus). I in­struct­ed the au­thor­i­ty to im­me­di­ate­ly take ac­tion against the of­fend­ers. WASA Po­lice went to the scene and took the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion.”

Of­fi­cials from WASA con­firmed its se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers re­moved an il­le­gal con­nec­tion made to one of the wells at the Sa­van­nah.