MSJ: Right to water should be law

THE Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) leader, David Abdulah said water is a basic human right and the constitution of TT should be amended to include the right to water. MSJ held a press conference at their office in St Joseph, San Fernando, yesterday to address this issue.

Abdulah said water was the one essential factor without which life could not exist and that include human life, plant life, and animal life.

“This will lead to many policy-decisions to ensure that right to water is not violated in any way.”

Critical, he said is the issue of water shortage and the very serious drought that the country was experiencing in many of the geographical communities as well as the farming communities.

He went on to say that only 20 per cent of the population got water on a 24/7 basis. Forty-five per cent of all the water produced, he said, is lost through leaks. While this he acknowledged that the story was "almost as old as the pipes themselves," he said TT would face water issues until it was addressed

“The country has gone through a huge boom from the mid-1990s all the way through to 2014, a fifteen-year period of expanding government revenues and expanding national income and the problems of leaks was not dealt with.”

He said past governments, both UNC and PNM, carried the lack of priority to put in place a proper water resources management system on their shoulders. He suggested that all the water from rainfall should be captured properly.

“This way we will not have flooding because we would be able to channel this rainfall into reservoirs and ponds which will then be available for use during the dry season.”

He touched on the Beverage Container Bill which had been drafted since 2008, one that would have avoided water courses being clogged. He mentioned the highway being built between Debe and Mon Desir that had already caused flooding late last year at an unprecedented scale and continued to have an impact on the general hydrology of the swamp areas in Oropouche.

“These issues are failures of past administrations and MSJ will address these issues in a more fundamental way,” he said.

He said climate change also had a direct impact on the supply of water.

“Some people are predicting that the next world war will be fought over oil but over water and so we in TT need to have a sustainable development programme and policy that even if we have a severe drought, the water shortage will not be as severe as we are currently experiencing.

President of the TT Unified Farmers Association (TTUFA) Shiraz Khan said, this year, farmers were placed in a terrible position.

“A number of large companies are putting their waste in Caroni River and farmers are using the water that is basically unclean.”

He said there were no retention ponds to deal with the issue. He noted that Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat had been talking about developing the ponds in Caparo area but it was just not happening.

He said farmers had to go without forage as TT had not been able to produce any hay because the Government decided to send home all the contract employees who were maintaining the Man Jaloux Farm in Tableland in the La Gloria Estate.

“It is not about vegetable farmers alone but also the livestock farmers who must sustain their farm by feeding animals forage.”