People living in St Joseph are calling for better water service, especially in light of next month’s increase in water bills.
Sunday the Barbados Water Authority’s (BWA) rapid response and communications manager Joy-Ann Haigh advised residents in parts of St Joseph, St Andrew and St Thomas they might experience low pressure and outages due to mechanical malfunctions.
In Chimborazo and Horse Hill in St Joseph, some residents said Sunday afternoon that though the water was running, this was not the norm.
Sharissa Scantlebury was using the opportunity to bathe her young son Amari at a standpipe in Chimborazo. She said it was rare these days to have water on a Sunday so she was not about to waste it.
“We usually don’t have water on mornings at all, although it comes back on evenings. Last week was bad; we barely had any water at all,” she said.
Scantlebury said she collected buckets of water when it was available but extended water outages was tough on the people there.
Winston “Tot” Gamble complained his livestock had been suffering. He said they had to gather water from over the hill should the standpipe below be dry. He also said this was not good enough seeing the extra $1.50 per day which would be added to domestic water bills from July 1 by the current administration.
“It’s difficult and now we have to pay more for water too? It’s on today but I don’t know for how long, and if it will be on for the rest of the week,” he said.
Across from the standpipe was a BWA community tank. However, Gamble showed it was empty and thus useless.
A woman, who only identified herself as Wendy, said while water was running yesterday, this was rare.
“This is the first Sunday in a while that water is on. It goes off too regular; all last week it was off and even the weeks before when it was running, it’s only for a few days. The water authority needs to do a lot better now that Government put that fee on water,” she said.
Unlike at Chimborazo, the community water tank in Horse Hill contained water but two of the three tap handles had been broken off.
In Chalky Mount and Belleplaine, St Andrew, residents said running water was not currently a major problem, although there were intermittent outages on certain days.
Haigh apologised for any inconvenience caused and asked those who experienced outages to report the matter to the call centre at 434-4292 in order to get water dispatched to them. (CA)
