KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

Pipe-borne wa­ter is ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly re­stored to con­sumers in south and cen­tral Trinidad who have been with­out a sup­ply for four days be­cause of elec­tri­cal is­sues at De­sal­cott’s Point Lisas plant.

That was the promise from De­sal­cott’s Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor John Thomp­son who said the plant had been op­er­at­ing at 85 per cent pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty and was on­ly able to pro­vide 34 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day (mgd) to the Wa­ter And Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so promised that cus­tomers will have wa­ter soon.

“The De­sal plant is not back up ful­ly and we’re hop­ing by 10 o’clock to­mor­row (to­day), some­time dur­ing the course of to­mor­row, the plant will be back to full op­er­a­tion,” he said.

“But nor­mal­ly when you have a dis­rup­tion of this na­ture, it takes quite a lot of time for pres­sures to build or all com­mu­ni­ties to get their sched­uled sup­ply. So those com­mu­ni­ties that are still with­out wa­ter, I wish to give them the as­sur­ance wa­ter is still be­ing di­vert­ed from oth­er ar­eas to make up the short­fall from De­sal­cott.”

De­sal­cott is un­der a con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment to pro­vide 40 gal­lons of wa­ter a day for WASA to meet the de­mands of its cus­tomers. Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, if De­sal­cott can­not pro­vide that, for what­ev­er rea­son, WASA can­not meet its oblig­a­tions to its cus­tomers. He de­scribed it as “a chick­en and egg sit­u­a­tion.”

Asked whether he was sat­is­fied with the per­for­mance of De­sal­cott, he said: “Un­der­stand­ing that it has a crit­i­cal role to play in the pro­vi­sion of wa­ter to Trinidad and To­ba­go, it (De­sal­cott) has to en­sure that the kind of dis­rup­tion and the reg­u­lar­i­ty in the dis­rup­tion that they have been hav­ing is im­pact­ing up­on the util­i­ty com­pa­ny to pro­vide wa­ter to its cus­tomers.

“They need to en­sure that their main­te­nance pro­gramme is in place to re­duce the high lev­el of the dis­rup­tions that we’ve been hav­ing at the plant be­cause the in­ter­rup­tions that we’ve hav­ing on our cus­tomers is just un­de­sir­able and it shouldn’t be al­lowed to con­tin­ue, so De­sal­cott has a se­ri­ous role to play.”

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) said sup­ply would be re­stored to cus­tomers in cen­tral and south Trinidad. Some ar­eas, in­clud­ing parts of Gas­par­il­lo, Mara­bel­la, San Fer­nan­do, Pleas­antville, Co­coyea, South Oropouche, Dow Vil­lage, Aripero, St Mary’s Vil­lage, La Brea, Ves­signy and oth­ers have re­ceived wa­ter.

Sev­er­al op­po­si­tion MPs and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions in cen­tral and south Trinidad said they do not be­lieve wa­ter will be re­stored in all the af­fect­ed ar­eas to­day.

At a me­dia brief­ing at UNC head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo said he is ready to protest if wa­ter is not re­stored as promised.

“There will be a fight for wa­ter soon in com­mu­ni­ties. Peo­ple will start fight­ing for wa­ter. Is this what the gov­ern­ment wants to see? I am ask­ing and I am plead­ing with them, if this is not rec­ti­fied by the end of this week and that en­tire bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion does not get a sup­ply of wa­ter, we will take some fire from south in­to Port-of-Spain,” he warned.

The Op­po­si­tion ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of un­der-re­sourc­ing WASA and blamed Gon­za­les for the prob­lems af­fect­ing the util­i­ty.

Orop­uche West MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo al­so warned WASA of­fi­cials that they are be­ing “set up” and said the com­pa­ny will soon suf­fer the same fate as the Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Petrotrin).

In re­sponse to the Op­po­si­tion, Gon­za­les said: “You can­not call a news con­fer­ence to bash the Au­thor­i­ty and yet still con­demn the gov­ern­ment for at­tempt­ing to re­struc­ture and to trans­form the same Au­thor­i­ty that they are bash­ing. We can’t take them se­ri­ous­ly. I am not pre­pared to be dis­tract­ed by their an­tics and this com­e­dy fest that they have to­day that they call a press con­fer­ence.”

At the UNC press con­fer­ence, Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath sug­gest­ed short-term mea­sures to help with the wa­ter sit­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing bring­ing more con­trac­tors on board to as­sist with sup­ply­ing wa­ter to cus­tomers.

In re­sponse Gon­za­les said, “What we’ve done is move wa­ter truck­ing ser­vices from some ar­eas and have them fo­cused on the af­fect­ed ar­eas and that has been go­ing good so far. We’re al­so en­sur­ing that pub­lic ser­vices are not im­pact­ed. Schools get their sup­ply of wa­ter.”