Beckles alleges political victimisation in Arima water crisis

Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of po­ten­tial­ly us­ing the wa­ter sup­ply as a tool for po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, say­ing res­i­dents in Ari­ma and parts of East Trinidad be­lieve their wors­en­ing wa­ter short­ages be­gan af­ter the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader made the claim in a state­ment on Wednes­day as she high­light­ed weeks-long dis­rup­tions af­fect­ing sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing Va­len­cia West, where she said some res­i­dents have been with­out a pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply for al­most three weeks.

Beck­les said res­i­dents in Pin­to Road, Cal­vary, San­ta Rosa and Ari­ma Prop­er, who pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived a reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply be­fore the elec­tion, are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing pro­longed short­ages and low wa­ter pres­sure.

She said res­i­dents have al­so ex­pressed con­cern that, be­cause wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion re­lies on man­u­al op­er­a­tions, “turnkey” work­ers have in­di­cat­ed they are act­ing on in­struc­tions from se­nior of­fi­cials. Beck­les said those re­ports have fu­elled fears of pos­si­ble po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

“There are se­ri­ous con­cerns about pos­si­ble po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion,” she said.

Beck­les ques­tioned whether the short­ages re­flect­ed a na­tion­al wa­ter sup­ply prob­lem and asked why res­i­dents in Ari­ma were now fac­ing dis­rup­tions they had not ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore.

She al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the wa­ter sec­tor, say­ing it had been al­lo­cat­ed $315 mil­lion to im­prove the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply but res­i­dents had yet to see the ben­e­fits.

Beck­les said ex­ten­sive work had been car­ried out at the Gua­napo Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant but claimed there had been no no­tice­able im­prove­ment in the wa­ter sup­ply to Ari­ma and East Trinidad.

“This is not per­for­mance. Why must the peo­ple of Ari­ma con­tin­ue to suf­fer like this?” she asked.