The Barbados Water Authority (BWA) has come up with an emergency plan to deal with the current problems with water outages and low water pressure being experienced across the country.
But residents in St Joseph won’t have it easy much of this week and beyond. They have been forced to battle with daily outages since last week.
“The residents of St Joseph are getting water today (Wednesday), but we will also be shutting off the water at 10 p.m., and starting back pumping at 4.30 a.m. for the remainder of the week in those areas affected, like Suriname, Horse Hill and Lammings,” the Barbados Water Authority’s communications specialist Joy-Ann Haigh said.
Residents of St Joseph are also being urged to collect water on a daily basis, since their problems will persist until this weekend, maybe into next week.
Haigh revealed that an equipment failure which occurred at the Waterford pumping station on Monday had been rectified Tuesday afternoon, and that water was available once again for residents of Cave Hill, Eden Lodge, Hothersal Turning and Lodge Hill in St Michael.
“We are still waiting for the water levels in St Joseph and St Thomas to come back up, but things are definitely improving in those areas as well,” Haigh added.
In addition, the BWA has set up a special telephone hotline to deal with the problem, and it will be manned until midnight every day until things improve. The agency has been bombarded with hundreds of calls since Good Friday to deal with numerous ruptured mains and water outages.
Three schools in the rural parish of St Thomas were forced to cancel classes today and send home children as the water outage problems continued.
The Lester Vaughan Memorial School, Sharon Primary and the Maria Holder Nursery School in St Thomas were all without water.
Residents in the nearby areas of Shop Hill, Cane Garden and Christie Village have all had problems with either no water or very low pressure since last Friday when a nine-inch main ruptured in Hopewell, St Thomas.
The BWA continues to send out water tankers to affected areas, and Haigh said yesterday they would maintain a high level of water runs until reservoirs reached a desired level. (BA)
