Residents question water outages, tanker response

A much-needed pump replacement and an electrical issue left some residents in St George, St John and St Philip without water for up to a week, but some are questioning why they are part of the affected water system and why water tankers took so long to reach them. Barbados TODAY visited central and south-eastern districts earlier this week to investigate the reported outages. In Sweet Vale, St George, Adrian Brewster said the village was without water for four days, while another resident just up the hill had been without water for up to a month. “It seems the pressure doesn’t go up the hill, they have to come down [to the standpipe] to collect water, and that’s going on about a month or two now. ” He said the situation with his neighbour was concerning because he has animals and only in the early hours of the morning, around 3 a. m.

, are he and his family able to bathe and fill water containers. “If he wait ’til after five o’clock he can’t get no water come up here, so when everybody [is sleeping] pressure will get up there. ” Brewster said he saw a water truck two days after the pipes ran dry, but only once. Another resident said, “The night time, we get water about 10 o’clock in the night time. My aunt didn’t go to work for the last few days because she didn’t get water. To get water, she had to go to Bayley Alley for water to bathe to go to work. It seems like their water was on. ” Water tank at Baley Alley. (LG) Brewster, who lives next to a standpipe, said it appeared to only work for a few hours at a time. “I time it, but every three hours, you see water there or sometimes you get no water,” he said, with a mocking laugh. He said the water did return late Sunday, but the pressure was still low. “It running, but it slow. Even yesterday it didn’t come on; that water…