Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor says To­ba­go res­i­dents will soon get ad­di­tion­al sup­port to store wa­ter as the is­land faces drought-like con­di­tions and in­creas­ing­ly dry weath­er.

The Sec­re­tary of Health and Well­ness said her di­vi­sion will be do­ing its part to as­sist vul­ner­a­ble groups.

“We are en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to try to store wa­ter as best as they can. The di­vi­sion will ac­tu­al­ly im­ple­ment short­ly an ex­pan­sion of our wa­ter tank sup­ple­ment where we are go­ing to help in­di­vid­u­als who may not have wa­ter tanks to help them get at least one wa­ter tank for their fam­i­ly.”

The an­nounce­ment comes as Breb­nor said she was stunned to hear that tem­per­a­tures could rise soon.

“To think that it is go­ing to get hot­ter, it’s hard to fath­om that,” she said.

The THA’s de­ci­sion comes as me­te­o­rol­o­gist Car­rie Chap­man-Du­mas is warn­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to brace for even hot­ter con­di­tions in the next few months.

Chap­man-Du­mas, a se­nior of­fi­cial at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Met Of­fice, spoke last Wednes­day at a work­shop in Scar­bor­ough fo­cused on build­ing com­mu­ni­ty re­silience in prepa­ra­tion for emer­gen­cies and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

Chap­man-Du­mas said de­spite re­cent ex­treme tem­per­a­tures, con­di­tions still do not meet the of­fi­cial de­f­i­n­i­tion of a hot spell.

How­ev­er, with dri­er con­di­tions in the fore­cast, she urged the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go, to pre­pare.

She re­vealed that To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to be in an even more pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion with drought-like con­di­tions an­tic­i­pat­ed.

Chap­man-Du­mas said May, the be­gin­ning of the wet sea­son, pro­duced just eight mil­lime­tres of rain­fall.

She added that arid con­di­tions linger as Au­gust rain­fall is just 66 per cent of its pro­jec­tion with just a hand­ful of days re­main­ing in the month.

“Yes, the rainy sea­son was de­clared in May, but it was the worst month thus far,” she said.

“The Sa­hara dust has been a se­ri­ous prob­lem con­tend­ing with those trop­i­cal waves that give us our rain­fall dur­ing the rainy sea­son...Some­time be­tween the end of Au­gust in­to Sep­tem­ber-Oc­to­ber, we are look­ing at drought-like con­di­tions for To­ba­go.”

Asked whether she was wor­ried giv­en the de­mand for wa­ter will in­crease in Oc­to­ber as vis­i­tors ar­rive for To­ba­go Car­ni­val, Breb­nor said she has faith in the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

“I am not con­cerned just yet. We are work­ing with WASA to im­prove the process of wa­ter sup­ply on the is­land. That has been a long­stand­ing is­sue, and there are some short-term and long-term plans.”

Breb­nor praised WASA for its pro­vi­sion of truck-borne wa­ter, and en­cour­aged the pub­lic to con­tact the util­i­ty provider to re­quest that ser­vice when a sup­ply is need­ed.