Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents are ap­peal­ing to the au­thor­i­ties to re­solve a prob­lem at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s Ol­era Heights apart­ment com­plex that has left them with dry taps for weeks.

The com­plex com­pris­es sev­en six-lev­el build­ings with a to­tal of 196 apart­ments. Res­i­dents said they have ex­pe­ri­enced this is­sue for years but nei­ther the HDC nor the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“Look at how many peo­ple live here. We have chil­dren. We have old peo­ple. We have sick peo­ple and it is so ridicu­lous. HDC blam­ing WASA, WASA blam­ing HDC, but to me, the whole prob­lem is those tanks and the pump down the hill. It is not suf­fi­cient to push the wa­ter up the hill,” said Di­ane Pe­dro.

Ana-Marie Paul, who lives on the fifth floor with two chil­dren, said she is forced to buy bot­tled wa­ter and food.

“I haven’t had wa­ter for the past three weeks. One time when it came with enough pres­sure to reach up­stairs, I was at work. I work shifts. So I haven’t had any wa­ter. I have gone by friends to wash clothes. But is the worst, to flush toi­let, all the wares dirty, you can’t mop the house, it very un­san­i­tary,” she said.

Paul said when there is wa­ter on the low­er lev­els, she has to fill up bot­tles at 5 am be­fore she goes to work.

Show­ing red scratch marks on her chest, Peg­gy Laka­too com­plained that she and an­oth­er res­i­dent had to clear over­grown grass in a drain.

“And is be­cause the grass af­fect­ed my skin and I had to pull out all kind of thing, it itch­ing, it is burn­ing my chest. In­side the build­ing have in­sects, every sin­gle day you have to be spray­ing,” she com­plained.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Pamela Lalchan, com­plained that wa­ter is leak­ing in­to her apart­ment and flood­ing her bed­room.

WASA’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Daniel Plen­ty said there are no is­sues af­fect­ing the wa­ter sup­ply to Ol­era Heights.

“The area has been re­ceiv­ing a sup­ply every three days or so, as per sched­ule. The area was sup­plied last Wednes­day and the sup­ply is on to­day (Sat­ur­day),” he said.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said WASA was not aware that there was a non-sup­ply and opened a main valve so a sup­ply re­turned. She re­ferred a no­tice dat­ed Ju­ly 15 from HDC to Ol­era Heights res­i­dents that blamed a re­cent pow­er surge at the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T for a pro­longed wa­ter short­age at the apart­ment com­plex.

Ac­cord­ing to that no­tice, WASA has been work­ing to re­store the wa­ter sup­ply and an­tic­i­pat­ed that it would be ful­ly re­stored by 11.30 am yes­ter­day.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Cor­po­ra­tion is tak­ing proac­tive mea­sures to en­hance the wa­ter sup­ply with­in the de­vel­op­ment. We are in the process of es­tab­lish­ing an ad­di­tion­al tank farm to en­sure a more re­li­able and im­proved wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem with­in the de­vel­op­ment of Ol­era Heights,” the no­tice added.

Robin­son-Reg­is said three tank farms are sup­ply­ing wa­ter to the com­pound but due to ra­tioning by WASA, the lev­els in the tanks are too low to ac­ti­vate the pumps.