Gonzales vows to pour resources into water supply

Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales says he empathises with the difficulties faced by communities with irregular water supplies and has promised to invest more resources in providing a better quality of service to them.

Speaking with Newsday on Friday, Gonzales said the challenges experienced by people in certain areas were not lost on him.

Referring to his own upbringing, Gonzales said he has had to carry pails of water to his home from standpipes and rivers in the past.

He added that he felt strongly about these issues and vowed to introduce long- and short-term strategies to underserved communities.

Among them, he said, was the creation of a committee in the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) that would monitor the quality of service in parts of Trinidad served by the Hollis Reservoir and the Navet Water Treatment Plant.

The Hollis Reservoir serves Valencia, Arima and parts of Lopinot and the Navet Water Treatment plants serves large parts of Mayaro, Princes Town, Moruga and Rio Claro.

"We were not happy about the fact that several communities are going for over ten days without water and have to initiate protest action.

"So I asked two commissioners on the board to form a committee of senior executives inside of WASA to monitor closely the water scheduling of those areas to ensure areas where WASA would not have met its schedule would have access to truck-borne supply."

He said already over the last year, more than 125,000 people would have seen an improved water supply.

"We are going to continue to ramp up these projects as we move towards the end of this financial year and the new financial year to target more communities."

Gonzales said he intended to include 100,000 more citizens under the community water improvement programme.

Speaking on longer-term strategies to improve water availability, Gonzales said finances from the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) and the Ministry of Finance would help in the work of his ministry.

Responding to suggestions to improve the intake of water from the Desalination Company (Desalcott), to alleviate the demand for water, Gonzales said that would be too costly, and outlined other plans under way.

"What we're preparing to do, or what we are doing, is making sure we access water from our underground aquifers in some of these areas that have a poor level of service, because it is cheaper, and we can bring water closer to those communities so they will not be impacted by seasonal conditions.

"I also indicated that we have a number of plans already in place in the Freeport area and the Aripo area and Mayaro, where we are drilling for new groundwater sources, so there can be less reliance on these reservoirs in Hollis and Navet."

Gonzales said he hoped to improve the quality of service to various communities by the end of his tenure as minister.