Morvant residents demand answers after ‘weeks with no water’

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Res­i­dents of parts of Mor­vant are plead­ing for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion from the au­thor­i­ties, with some house­holds re­port­ing that they have gone up to six weeks with­out a reg­u­lar pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed parts of Cale­do­nia and Up­per Mal­ick yes­ter­day with the coun­cil­lor for the area and San Juan/Laven­tille vice-chair­man, Kwe­si An­toine, who said res­i­dents have re­sort­ed to pur­chas­ing wa­ter from peo­ple who il­le­gal­ly col­lect it from Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) mains.

Res­i­dent Kwe­si Dy­er said ar­eas served by the Cipri­ani Av­enue sys­tem have been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed, with wa­ter ei­ther not reach­ing homes or ar­riv­ing with in­suf­fi­cient pres­sure to reach high­er el­e­va­tions.

Dy­er said res­i­dents have re­peat­ed­ly con­tact­ed WASA and were told that re­pairs were be­ing car­ried out on a boost­er sys­tem serv­ing the area. How­ev­er, he claimed the promised re­pairs have been de­layed for sev­er­al weeks.

“For the past years, we have had boost­er prob­lems, but it takes about two to three days for a boost­er to be fixed in the past. This has been go­ing on for six weeks! No wa­ter at all, when we call for wa­ter, for truck-borne wa­ter, they’re telling me it’s go­ing to be a prob­lem be­cause there is a back­log.”

The pro­longed dis­rup­tion has forced res­i­dents to pur­chase wa­ter, trav­el out­side the com­mu­ni­ty to bathe and wash clothes, and cope with the dif­fi­cul­ties of flush­ing toi­lets and main­tain­ing ba­sic hy­giene.

One woman said she pays up to $500 to have three tanks filled.

An­toine said that pri­or to last year’s elec­tion, res­i­dents re­ceived wa­ter on a reg­u­lar sched­ule and, while there were times when some had no wa­ter, it was not for weeks at a time. He stopped short of say­ing the is­sue was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

“This is go­ing on now for far too long, with mul­ti­ple prob­lems. Every time one seems to be re­solved, we hear about an­oth­er is­sue hap­pen­ing, and this is up to to­day (Sat­ur­day),” de­clared An­toine.

“Apart from pro­longed short­ages due to these mul­ti­ple prob­lems, WASA is not as­sist­ing the sit­u­a­tion with truck-borne sup­plies, and it has caused fur­ther prob­lems for res­i­dents who now have to buy wa­ter. Some un­scrupu­lous per­sons are tak­ing wa­ter from fire hy­drants to sell to them,” he claimed.

“ I don’t want to think this, but I do feel like it, even when you speak to some res­i­dents, they’re al­so say­ing the same thing. When you talk to the res­i­dents, they were get­ting wa­ter Mon­day or Tues­day, when­ev­er they were get­ting the wa­ter. But now it’s months past and they’re not get­ting wa­ter at all!”

He added that the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is al­so starved of cash and is un­able to pro­vide wa­ter for his burgess­es. An­toine said he reached out to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath but did not get a re­sponse. Guardian Me­dia al­so called and mes­saged Padarath, but up to press time there had been no re­sponse.

“We have no mon­ey to buy or pay for wa­ter or WASA trucks. This is the kind of thing we have to deal with, no mon­ey in the cor­po­ra­tion right now. So we nor­mal­ly help the res­i­dents when they call us and ask for help with wa­ter. We are in a sit­u­a­tion now be­cause we don’t have mon­ey to pay for it. We can’t pro­vide wa­ter for res­i­dents and if you go through the whole of Mor­vant, Cale­do­nia, Mal­ick, in my elec­toral dis­trict, peo­ple are cry­ing out for wa­ter.”

Res­i­dent Ray­mond Row­ley, said some house­holds are now re­ceiv­ing wa­ter on­ly in­ter­mit­tent­ly, with long gaps be­tween sup­plies. He said re­peat­ed re­quests to WASA for truck-borne wa­ter had gone unan­swered de­spite re­ceiv­ing ref­er­ence num­bers for the com­plaints and pay­ing his bill on time.

Row­ley, who said he has lived in the area for more than 60 years, de­scribed the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion as the worst wa­ter short­age he has ex­pe­ri­enced in the com­mu­ni­ty.

An­oth­er pen­sion­er, Far­rell Pierre, said he is un­able to car­ry the wa­ter need­ed to care for his rel­a­tives at home and is plead­ing for as­sis­tance. - With re­port­ing by Gail Alexan­der