Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter sev­en weeks with­out pipe-borne wa­ter, frus­trat­ed res­i­dents of Roberts Vil­lage, Table­land, are ap­peal­ing to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath for help.

They say the sit­u­a­tion has be­come un­bear­able as truck-borne sup­plies have been slow to reach the com­mu­ni­ty, leav­ing fam­i­lies strug­gling to meet their dai­ly needs.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, one res­i­dent, Har­ri­lal Ramb­ha­jan, said he has a large fam­i­ly, and re­liance on truck-borne wa­ter is chal­leng­ing.

Ramb­ha­jan said the com­mu­ni­ty has ex­pe­ri­enced wa­ter woes for years, but when the present gov­ern­ment took of­fice, their sup­ply had im­proved.

He ex­plained that the wa­ter­line was in­stalled in 1942, but there have been con­stant break­ages, and when the pres­sure is too strong, the line would “blow out.”

“We just can’t take it again. It’s too much of prob­lems,” lament­ed Ramb­ha­jan as he called on the min­is­ter to in­ter­vene.

“We call­ing WASA. WASA keep mak­ing ex­cuse af­ter ex­cuse and noth­ing has been done.”

Kath­leen Tay­lor, 69, a res­i­dent of William­smith and Man­at­a­cool Road, said she, like her neigh­bours, would have to pack her car with con­tain­ers to search for stand­pipes and oth­er sources of wa­ter.

She said her chil­dren have been go­ing to rel­a­tives to do their laun­dry.

“Do some­thing,” she plead­ed to the min­is­ter, sug­gest­ing that he re­place the lines from New Grant to Rio Claro.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Asha Ramb­ha­jan, who runs a beau­ty sa­lon from her home, said her busi­ness has been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed.

“Most of the times be­cause we nev­er have wa­ter, I have to ask clients to wash their hair be­fore they come to my sa­lon, which cuts back on hav­ing to style their hair.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter Padarath said he was ad­vised by the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (WASA) that they have in­creased truck-borne wa­ter de­liv­er­ies to as­sist af­fect­ed ar­eas.

Padarath said he has man­dat­ed the au­thor­i­ty to con­struct tank farms in im­pact­ed com­mu­ni­ties over the next month or two.

“I have asked WASA to pro­vide me with an up­date ur­gent­ly on the chal­lenges to keep the wa­ter sched­ule. There is a com­bi­na­tion of di­lap­i­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture and re­duced ca­pac­i­ty of the Navet dam. The short-term so­lu­tion has been to in­crease, as of yes­ter­day, more wa­ter truck­ing ser­vices and in­crease ca­pac­i­ty at the Navet dam.”

The min­is­ter said the gov­ern­ment had in­her­it­ed sys­temic chal­lenges which would take time to re­solve. How­ev­er, he not­ed that a de­sali­na­tion plant is one of the pro­posed so­lu­tions.

“We have as­sured those com­mu­ni­ties of a de­sali­na­tion plant. The ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est will be out this month,” he said.

WASA, how­ev­er, ex­plained that Robert Vil­lage is an el­e­vat­ed area at the end of the dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work in Table­land, and the dis­rup­tion in the pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply fol­lows a leak on a 12-inch main in Gransaul Trace, Pi­paro, on Tues­day. Com­bined with the area’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as a net­work end­point and its aged in­fra­struc­ture, WASA ex­plained that this has sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed wa­ter pres­sures, de­lay­ing the restora­tion of ser­vice to the high­er parts of the vil­lage.

The au­thor­i­ty said the long-term so­lu­tion to the fre­quent break­ages in­volves re­plac­ing the aged 200mm AC pipeline along Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road, a 14.7 km stretch from Tor­rib Tabaquite Road to San Pe­dro Road. The up­grade is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide a more re­li­able sup­ply to end­point com­mu­ni­ties like Robert Vil­lage, but fund­ing for the project is cur­rent­ly be­ing sought.