Relief in sight for Debe homeowner after WASA intervenes

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

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Tears of joy flowed from Jhu­mantie Mo­hammed af­ter a Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) team ar­rived at her home on Fri­day, con­duct­ing tests and start­ing ex­ca­va­tion of a con­demned WASA line which she be­lieves is re­spon­si­ble for the un­der­min­ing of her Debe home.

Wip­ing her eyes, Mo­hammed said she worked hard all her life sell­ing pro­duce in the mar­ket, beat­ing rice and do­ing do­mes­tic work to build her home, which she says now has a con­stant flow of chlo­ri­nat­ed wa­ter run­ning be­neath it.

“I am 72 years old and I worked all my life. I can’t sleep at night, I have to sleep on the couch. It hard for me,” Mo­hammed said, ex­plain­ing that she has been beg­ging for the is­sue to be ad­dressed for near­ly a decade. She fears the con­tin­u­ous wa­ter flow has weak­ened her foun­da­tion, caus­ing steel and re­in­forced con­crete to rot and her house to shift out of shape.

Hug­ging Mo­hammed as she wept, WASA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dain Ma­haraj promised to find the source of the leak.

Ma­haraj ex­plained that pre­lim­i­nary sam­pling was done on site and lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing would take sev­er­al hours to de­ter­mine chlo­rine con­tent and match it against World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion stan­dards for treat­ed wa­ter. He not­ed that once chlo­rine is de­tect­ed, it would con­firm the source as WASA in­fra­struc­ture, as there are no raw wa­ter lines in the area.

“What we are do­ing dif­fer­ent this time ,” Ma­haraj said, not­ing that teams from wa­ter loss, op­er­a­tions and the lab­o­ra­to­ry were all de­ployed ear­ly. “We are ac­tu­al­ly go­ing up­stream where we have an old con­demned line, where we are go­ing to ex­ca­vate short­ly, to see if there’s any pos­si­bil­i­ty… and re­al­ly try to find ex­act­ly where this wa­ter is com­ing from.”

He ac­knowl­edged Mo­hammed’s frus­tra­tion, as pre­vi­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tions over the past ten years had at­trib­uted the wa­ter to cesspit or spring sources, de­spite her own in­de­pen­dent tests in­di­cat­ing chlo­ri­nat­ed wa­ter. Ma­haraj as­sured that WASA would now push fur­ther by ex­ca­vat­ing po­ten­tial sources and re­view­ing records, while re­ly­ing on fresh sam­pling rather than old­er da­ta.

Ad­dress­ing wider con­cerns about ag­ing in­fra­struc­ture in the com­mu­ni­ty, Ma­haraj said WASA is as­sess­ing pipe breaks per kilo­me­tre and us­ing in­ter­na­tion­al bench­marks to de­ter­mine when en­tire lines must be re­placed rather than re­peat­ed­ly patched.

Area coun­cil­lor for La For­tune Debe North, Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh, wel­comed the swift re­sponse and cred­it­ed the in­ter­ven­tion of Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath.

“Yes­ter­day, he gave the in­struc­tion to WASA to come out and do the in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Per­sads­ingh said. “Mr Dain Ma­haraj reached out al­most im­me­di­ate­ly to me and the res­i­dent, and he as­sem­bled a team this morn­ing to come out here and lend some as­sis­tance.”

Per­sads­ingh said Mo­hammed had been com­plain­ing for about ten years and while some as­sess­ments were done, Ma­haraj has now com­mit­ted to find­ing the root cause and en­sur­ing the mat­ter is re­solved through col­lab­o­ra­tion with WASA, the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion or pri­vate sup­port if need­ed.

“Re­lief is in sight,” he said. “This sit­u­a­tion will be re­solved now.”