It is prob­a­bly the most com­mon phone call to the news­room.

Like clock­work, ei­ther my­self or an­oth­er col­league on the re­ceiv­ing end would be tasked to “find out what hap­pen­ing for we nah” our re­spons­es im­me­di­ate and seem­ing­ly re­hearsed, “which area are you call­ing from” and “how long have you been with­out wa­ter?”

In the last five years em­ployed at Guardian Me­dia Ltd, I have per­son­al­ly heard scores of cit­i­zens lament­ing their plight of dry taps at least twice every month and seen their frus­tra­tions boil over when they would take to the streets protest­ing their in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess, through the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty, one of the main ne­ces­si­ties of life.

Con­dem­na­tion from every cor­ner of the coun­try, as an­nu­al promis­es of run­ning wa­ter for all, has on­ly served to run down the pa­tience of cit­i­zens who con­tin­ue to en­dure wa­ter short­age for weeks, months and in the case of res­i­dents of Ser­re­nau Road Ex­ten­sion in Bel­mont, decades.

The lan­guish­ing ques­tions resur­face—how has one of the Caribbean re­gion’s rich­est coun­tries bol­stered by oil booms, in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment and a well-oiled econ­o­my not been able to de­liv­er on a promise of wa­ter for all.

And, how is it more than half a cen­tu­ry af­ter a hope­ful Guardian News­pa­per head­line, “Trinidad like­ly to solve wa­ter prob­lem by 1960,” has nev­er ma­te­ri­alised, as the key el­e­ment need­ed for the con­tin­u­a­tion of life seems to be a prover­bial pie in the sky.

A cab­i­net re­port which is to be laid in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day (March 5) has un­earthed damn­ing but un­sur­pris­ing de­tails about the State com­pa­ny’s col­lapse.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, “ WASA has be­come an un­wieldy, over­staffed, un­pro­duc­tive, un­re­spon­sive or­gan­i­sa­tion that has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and is no longer ef­fi­cient­ly serv­ing the cit­i­zens of T&T. There is a gen­er­al lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty per­vad­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion and the ex­ist­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture is the very an­tithe­sis of a high­ly pro­duc­tive or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Too much wa­ter

to promis­es of Wa­ter for All

Di­alling back to the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, be­fore there was a wa­ter man­age­ment com­pa­ny, to­day’s cit­i­zens would be left flab­ber­gast­ed to know that wa­ter once “run­neth over” in this coun­try, so much so that wa­ter or­di­nances were in­tro­duced by colo­nial of­fi­cials to curb wastage in Port-of-Spain. Wa­ter me­ters were au­tho­rised and rates in­creased, how­ev­er pub­lic ag­i­ta­tion led to the or­di­nances be­ing dis­missed.

In 1903, dur­ing a de­bate on an­oth­er or­di­nance to con­serve wa­ter con­sump­tion, a protest broke out and es­ca­lat­ed in­to what is now known as the wa­ter ri­ots.

A to­tal of 16 peo­ple were killed and the Red House de­stroyed by fire. The blood spill for­ev­er taint­ing the coun­try’s wa­ter lega­cy that fol­lowed.

The dis­turb­ing fac­tors of poor and in­ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­plies and oth­er fea­tures of un­der­de­vel­op­ment have at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments.

In 2000, the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion promised there would be wa­ter in every house­hold of the coun­try by the end of that year.

Then Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh was con­vinced that WASA com­bined with a de­sali­na­tion plant would re­alise their vi­sion.

Singh said then, “The na­tion’s long-stand­ing wa­ter woes must not be al­lowed to per­sist any fur­ther in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry.”

But de­spite re­ceiv­ing over 20 bil­lion dol­lars in Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions in the last decade, WASA has not been able to ful­fil its man­date “with an es­ti­mat­ed 34 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion cur­rent­ly get­ting a 24/7 sup­ply of wa­ter.”

A life with­out wa­ter

It means over 450,000 cit­i­zens ex­pe­ri­ence ei­ther wa­ter short­age or dai­ly dis­rup­tions to their ac­cess to pipe-borne wa­ter.

Among the hard­est hit, those re­sid­ing in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

But those who live in more ur­ban ar­eas have been forced to con­front the night­mar­ish re­al­i­ty of not hav­ing any wa­ter.

William Ban­nis­ter, who, along with over 250 oth­er res­i­dents of Ser­re­neau Road Ex­ten­sion Bel­mont, has nev­er known what it is like to have a steady sup­ply of run­ning wa­ter.

At near­ly 70 years old, the on­ly con­stant in the lives of Ban­nis­ter and his fam­i­ly is their dai­ly strug­gles with­out wa­ter.

“You see the lit­tle rain falling now, we does smile, we nev­er used to make style on rain­wa­ter be­cause most times rain­wa­ter was the sav­ing grace of the fam­i­lies liv­ing here. We al­ways have gut­ter­ing run­ning to catch wa­ter,” said Ban­nis­ter.

Guardian Me­dia spent some time with Ban­nis­ter and his fam­i­ly to see what their lives are like with­out the pre­cious com­mod­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to him, while wa­ter flowed through the taps 24/7 in oth­er ar­eas, his com­mu­ni­ty was much less for­tu­nate.

“If we get it two days a week that was plen­ty and when they feel to give us once or none at all we just had to fight up.”

Re­count­ing his child­hood strug­gles to ac­cess wa­ter, Ban­nis­ter said he nev­er ex­pect­ed to be haunt­ed by the ab­sence of the ba­sic ameni­ty to this day.

“Shame, shame, shame! Can’t be­lieve in 2021 with all the 2020 vi­sion and all the mon­ey pass­ing through this coun­try for the av­er­age peo­ple to be go­ing through this.”

Ban­nis­ter said nu­mer­ous let­ters have been sent to the au­thor­i­ties plead­ing for as­sis­tance, but much like the empti­ness in their taps, so too, have been the promis­es made for re­lief. Frus­trat­ed res­i­dents have staged nu­mer­ous protest ac­tions, the most re­cent be­ing in Jan­u­ary.

Ac­cord­ing to him, re­cy­cling wa­ter has been the res­i­dents’ strat­e­gy of get­ting by.

“Wa­ter mul­ti-task­ing now, that wa­ter we bathing with not go­ing down no drain, we putting that in a next buck­et, a kind of se­mi rinse wa­ter, that is to wash down yard. We does try to keep we place up to stan­dard.”