SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

With mod­er­ate to be­low-nor­mal rain­fall in the fore­cast for the next three months, the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is prepar­ing to in­tro­duce wa­ter re­stric­tions.

“We will be im­ple­ment­ing our wa­ter re­duc­tion strate­gies, that is, we will be is­su­ing the nor­mal re­stric­tions on the use of hoses, wa­ter­ing of lawns, wash­ing of ve­hi­cles, etc, and in keep­ing with our leak re­duc­tions dri­ve, our well ex­plo­ration, po­lice will be out mon­i­tor­ing to en­sure cus­tomers are com­ply­ing,” WASA chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga said at a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Ear­li­er in the brief­ing, Gary Ben­jamin pre­sent­ed the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice’s rain­fall and tem­per­a­ture out­look for April to June which showed mod­er­ate chances for near-nor­mal to be­low-nor­mal rain­fall.

“Near nor­mal to be­low nor­mal means that as usu­al or dri­er con­di­tions with av­er­age to less than av­er­age rain­fall events are pos­si­ble,” Ben­jamin ex­plained.

He said there was an en­hanced chance for av­er­age or less than ex­treme­ly wet days dur­ing that pe­ri­od. April and May have the high­est chance for be­low-nor­mal rain­fall, while June has a mod­er­ate chance for near-nor­mal rain­fall.

The coun­try may al­so ex­pe­ri­ence hot­ter days, Ben­jamin said.

“Both day and night tem­per­a­tures are pre­dict­ed to be slight­ly above av­er­age for most of Trinidad and To­ba­go with mod­er­ate, about 60 per cent, pos­si­bil­i­ties for short-du­ra­tion hot spells in April, May and June.”

He said the wet­ter months will bring an in­crease in the fly and mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tions and ad­vised cit­i­zens to prop­er­ly clean and sani­tise their prop­er­ties to pre­vent in­sect-borne dis­eases.

Nan­ga said al­though WASA had not im­posed re­stric­tions at the start of the dry sea­son, the Au­thor­i­ty want­ed to en­sure T&T does not get in­to a cri­sis with its wa­ter sup­ply.

“I in­di­cat­ed we do not want to wait un­til we hit a crit­i­cal lev­el then to im­ple­ment so that be­ing pre­dic­tive and tak­ing mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors we will im­ple­ment very short­ly to en­sure that we do not get to crit­i­cal lev­els,” he said.

Nan­ga al­so an­nounced that an app will soon be in­tro­duced for cus­tomers to re­port leaks, re­quest truck-borne wa­ter sup­ply and track the progress of each re­quest. He said WASA will soon em­bark on a mas­sive pipeline re­place­ment pro­gramme.