Water outages hit St Thomas

Residents in some St Thomas communities are up to their necks in water problems.For quite some time, residents in Hopewell, Shop Hill, Bloomsbury, Carrington Village, Vault Road and Edgehill have been made to go without water between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 or 6 a.m.According to angry resident Donna Maynard, the problem has been going on for about three years.“Every night they turn off the water and they don’t give us any notice at all. It is sickening. Sometimes when I wake up to prepare for work and make lunch I cannot do it because I have no water,” she said.“It needs to stop because we can do nothing without water,” she continued. “We even had to stop gardening because of no water. “To make matters worse, the people come and read the meters wrong. On more than one occasion, my mother’s water bill came out for $1 286.70. That is ridiculous; that can’t be right,” she said.Another resident from the Shop Hill area, who chose to remain anonymous, said that living had become even harder without the water.“I have a back problem and I cannot lift anything heavy, but every night and sometimes even during the day the water off and I can do nothing. “I have to take everything I have and store water in it because I do not know when they are going to turn off the water. Up to this morning I had to bathe out of a saucepan,” she said.Parliamentary representative for the area, Cynthia Forde, said that she was displeased with the situation.“I am not pleased with the way my people are being treated. There should be a notice if the water is going to be turned off so the residents can properly prepare,” she stated.Efforts to reach officials from the Barbados Water Authority yesterday were futile.