RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte says the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) will soon take con­trol of all of Petrotrin’s reser­voirs and will be­gin de­vel­op­ing bet­ter wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems.

Speak­ing at a PNM meet­ing held at the Siparia mar­ket on Tues­day night, Le Hunte said the wa­ter prob­lems be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced now were not new.

“We know that we have a prob­lem with wa­ter, but let us be hon­est, we have had this prob­lem with wa­ter not now! We have been hav­ing this prob­lem with wa­ter for a long while,” Le Hunte said.

He not­ed that the gov­ern­ment was work­ing to­ward im­prov­ing fresh­wa­ter sup­plies.

“We are drilling wells in Pa­lo Seco, we are drilling wells in Chatham, we are drilling wells in Granville, we are drilling wells in Ce­dros and there­fore we are bring­ing more wa­ter in­to the sys­tem,” he said.

He added, “I want to as­sure you that WASA is work­ing to take over all the op­er­a­tions of the old Petrotrin, and there­fore we go­ing to be up­grad­ing those sys­tems and en­sur­ing that we up­grade the wa­ter sup­ply that is pro­vid­ed to Pa­lo Seco, Ves­signy, and all those ar­eas.”

He al­so said that TSTT was work­ing on im­prov­ing broad­band ser­vices through­out T&T.

“I have spo­ken to the CEO of TSTT and by June next year, the peo­ple of this area will be get­ting im­proved Wi-Fi ser­vices and im­proved broad­band ser­vices,” he added

Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so said the pro­tract­ed drought had left the reser­voir lev­els low. He urged cit­i­zens not to lis­ten to the UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as she tries to use wa­ter as a means of gar­ner­ing votes.

“We have low lev­els. The rainy sea­son did not bring the reser­voirs up to lev­el. The reser­voirs is at 60 per cent. We now have a wa­ter prob­lem but they say­ing we suf­fer­ing you. When they were giv­ing away mon­ey. They weren’t con­cerned about you not get­ting wa­ter,” Row­ley said.

 He not­ed that the UNC had two chances of run­ning the coun­try.

“Let us not pre­tend that these wa­ter prob­lems are new to you,” Row­ley added.

He al­so said it was dis­gust­ing that the Siparia con­stituen­cy was so un­kempt.

“There are 14 cor­po­ra­tions... all of them are re­quired to do more with less. I have nev­er seen more bush than I’ve seen in Siparia. The grass is so high it could slap you in the face when you in your car,” Row­ley com­plained.

Say­ing the sit­u­a­tion was un­ac­cept­able, Row­ley said the UNC should not blame the PNM for their in­com­pe­ten­cies say­ing some of the monies giv­en by Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment should be used to keep the Siparia re­gion clean.