Gonzales challenges Padarath to drink brown tap water

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les is chal­leng­ing Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath to drink a glass of the same brown wa­ter flow­ing from the taps of af­fect­ed house­holds.

In a so­cial me­dia post, Gon­za­les ques­tioned Padarath’s as­sur­ance in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day that the dis­coloured wa­ter re­mained safe for do­mes­tic use.

“Stand be­fore the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Show them a glass of that same brown, dirty wa­ter flow­ing through their taps and tell us whether you would drink it or serve it to your chil­dren,” Gon­za­les said.

He stressed that he was re­fer­ring to the same wa­ter be­ing sup­plied to res­i­dents, rather than bot­tled or spe­cial­ly treat­ed wa­ter.

“Not bot­tled wa­ter, not spe­cial­ly treat­ed wa­ter. The very same brown wa­ter cit­i­zens are com­plain­ing about,” he said.

Padarath ex­plained in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day that ad­just­ments to the trans­mis­sion sys­tem, fol­lowed by the restora­tion of nor­mal wa­ter pres­sure, had dis­turbed sed­i­ment with­in sec­tions of the net­work, re­sult­ing in tem­po­rary dis­coloura­tion.

“WASA im­me­di­ate­ly com­menced flush­ing op­er­a­tions in the af­fect­ed ar­eas and they have ad­vised the pub­lic that the wa­ter re­mains safe for do­mes­tic use,” Padarath said.

Gon­za­les ques­tioned the sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence sup­port­ing that as­sur­ance and called for wa­ter qual­i­ty test re­sults.

“Where do wa­ter qual­i­ty tests re­sult? What sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence sup­ports your as­sur­ances, Min­is­ter? And when will this cri­sis end?” he asked.

He al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of a pri­vate mo­tion he brought be­fore Par­lia­ment last Fri­day con­cern­ing dis­rup­tions to the na­tion­al wa­ter sup­ply.

Gon­za­les said he de­liv­ered a 45-minute con­tri­bu­tion on the mo­tion and for­mal­ly moved it at the start of his con­tri­bu­tion, but claimed the Speak­er’s in­ter­ven­tion and the Gov­ern­ment’s par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty pre­vent­ed de­bate from con­tin­u­ing.

“Cit­i­zens are de­mand­ing clean wa­ter, and this gov­ern­ment busy us­ing its ma­jor­i­ty to shut down par­lia­men­tary de­bate about wa­ter,” he said.

Gon­za­les al­so called on Padarath to ac­cept po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the han­dling of the wa­ter sup­ply sit­u­a­tion and re­sign.

He said he would con­tin­ue de­mand­ing an­swers on be­half of his con­stituents and the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

“Clean wa­ter is not a po­lit­i­cal favour. It is a ba­sic ne­ces­si­ty. And the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­serve clean wa­ter, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty,” Gon­za­les said.