Residents blast BWA over water shortages, charging neglect

Unfair and abandoned, White Hill residents declared Monday, accusing the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) of a lack of care and attention to the hillside St Andrew village and ignoring calls for access to water as the dry season wears on.

When a team from Barbados TODAY visited on Monday, one of their most vocal residents, Carlitha Andrews, said the current situation was a frustrating one, which has been compounded by the apparent callous reactions from BWA officials, whenever residents voiced their difficulties.

She said: “It cannot be a coincidence, that every time the bill is to come out, we [then] get water… You imagine that a [water] tanker driver comes up here, and when he gets here to the tank, he has no key to open the tank. Why did [he] come up here if he has no keys to open the tank, that is one. The [residents] said alright, you have no key to open the tank, give us some water in the buckets, he refuses and went along about his business.

“[BWA General Manager] Keithroy Halliday is not looking into the complaints against the workers. It is useless complaining for these workers because they are doing as they like because management is not doing anything with them.”

Andrews said she was in full support of the residents of Horse Hill, St Joseph, who launched a protest on Sunday because of the lack of water they have had for several days now. Though she admitted she understood their plight, she stressed that White Hill residents were in a worse off situation, feeling abandoned away from the rest of the island, as they have not had a functioning main roadway since 2014, after it collapsed into a nearby gully.

She also suggested that the BWA superintendent in charge of the area should be moved, because of the frequency of issues they have had with the utility that they claimed have largely been ignored.

Andrews told Barbados TODAY: “Two weeks ago prior to Thursday, I called the call-in programme for a tanker, that is how I got a tanker again, and the moderator who used to work at BWA before – said they know the problem, they should at least every two days send a tanker.

“You know when the pipe has water, they send a tanker up here, and you don’t have to call for it? You want to tell me that they are not making mock sport at us? Now that we are not seeing any water, we are not getting a tanker.”

Susan Jemmott, a resident in the area for the past 22 years, says the problem was around long before she came to live there and since then, in particular when the main road gave way, residents have felt fully abandoned by Government.

She said: “I remember when the road broke away, this going seven years, they came, the minister came, and he abandoned the area one time. So it seems as though from that time until now we have been abandoned; no matter what we do, don’t matter what we say, no matter how much we cry, we are not getting no help, and it is so hard.” (SB)