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Thursday, May 8, 2025

No water in Plum Road, residents want springs reopened

by

Ralph Banwarie
852 days ago
20230106
Members of the Plum Mitan Village Council and other concerned residents speaking about water supply problems in their community

Members of the Plum Mitan Village Council and other concerned residents speaking about water supply problems in their community

RALPH BANWARIE

Res­i­dents of Plum Road, Man­zanil­la say they have not been re­ceiv­ing a pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply for months but are re­ceiv­ing WASA bills which they are re­fus­ing to pay un­til the ser­vice im­proves.

”It is like a ghost ser­vice, col­lect­ing mon­ey and no ser­vice,” one res­i­dent com­plained

The res­i­dents want WASA to re­open the wa­ter springs in their area. Spokesper­son Garvin Leza­ma said last year they on­ly got wa­ter in their taps 30 times out of 365 days and on­ly for two hours giv­ing res­i­dents very lit­tle time to fill their wa­ter tanks.

“We love the rain be­cause it fills our tanks and thank God for this,” he said.

He said those who can af­ford to buy wa­ter pay $400 to fill a 3,000-gal­lon tank.

Leza­ma said he has been in reg­u­lar con­tact with WASA of­fi­cials and has al­so writ­ten and spo­ken with an of­fi­cial of the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) about the lack of a wa­ter sup­ply to the vil­lage. He said he re­ceived a text mes­sage from the act­ing CEO of WASA who said he took note of Leza­ma’s con­cerns and will in­ves­ti­gate the sup­ply sit­u­a­tion.

One of the res­i­dents, Matthew Cuffie, said he has been liv­ing in the area for more than 45 years and they nev­er had wa­ter prob­lems be­cause there were two springs which pro­vid­ed wa­ter to the vil­lage. How­ev­er, in 2001 WASA stopped the vil­lagers from ac­cess­ing springs in Plum Road claim­ing the wa­ter was un­safe for con­sump­tion.

He said vil­lagers had been us­ing the wa­ter from the springs for years and nev­er got ill.

“We are strong and healthy Peo­ple be­gan get­ting sick be­cause of the poor sup­ply of WASA pipe-borne wa­ter, leav­ing them with house­hold chores in­com­plete, no reg­u­lar bathing, wash­ing and flush­ing of toi­lets,” Cuffie said.

Cuffie said in 2005 area was con­nect­ed to WASA and since then they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing wa­ter prob­lems.

Ra­mad­har Ram­baran, who has been liv­ing in Plum Road all his life, said his fam­i­ly of nine is bad­ly af­fect­ed by the sup­ply prob­lem be­cause the wa­ter pres­sure is so low that it sel­dom gets to his home.

He said WASA in­stalled a boost­er pump op­po­site the Man­zanil­la gas sta­tion but the prob­lem got worse.

The vil­lagers are ap­peal­ing to WASA to sup­ply wa­ter at least twice a week 24 hours. They are al­so call­ing for the in­ter­ven­tion of Mar­vin Gon­za­les Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

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