Beckles alleges political victimisation in Arima water crisis

Op­po­si­tion Leader 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.

Beck­les made the claim in a state­ment yes­ter­day, 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.

She 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.

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

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

She al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s man­age­ment of the wa­ter sec­tor, not­ing that $315 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed to im­prove the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply but res­i­dents had yet to see any tan­gi­ble 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.

Re­spond­ing to Beck­les’ claims, WASA said the dis­rup­tions were linked to re­duced raw wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty and op­er­a­tional chal­lenges.

WASA said the North East Dis­tri­b­u­tion Sys­tem is sup­plied al­most en­tire­ly by sur­face wa­ter sources and had been di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by rain­fall con­di­tions. It said Va­len­cia West and sec­tions of Ari­ma are sup­plied large­ly by the Hol­lis sys­tem, where be­low-av­er­age rain­fall dur­ing the re­cent dry sea­son caused raw wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty to de­cline sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

The au­thor­i­ty said Pin­to Road, San­ta Rosa and Cal­vary are sup­plied by the Gua­napo and Aripo Wa­ter Treat­ment Plants, which ex­pe­ri­enced in­ter­rup­tions on 10 non-con­sec­u­tive days in Ju­ly af­ter heavy rain­fall af­fect­ed raw wa­ter qual­i­ty and clogged in­take screens.
WASA said both plants have since been re­stored and the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties are be­ing sup­plied ac­cord­ing to es­tab­lished sched­ules.