Residents at Kew Land, Redman’s Village in St Thomas are “fed up” of their inconsistent water service.
Shakera Brooks told Barbados TODAY that while the area has been experiencing water issues for several years, since December 15 this year, the service has been severely disrupted, with water coming through the taps only in the wee hours of the morning and for a limited time. This was an unreasonable situation, she said.
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BWA workmen on the job in Chapman Village, St Thomas, another district affected by outages.[/caption]
However, Brooks said that while the residents are accustomed to seeing a water tanker passing through the area whenever the water goes off, this has not been the case in recent days.
“The pipe off and nobody just ain’t checking. We haven’t seen a tanker for the whole week; not yesterday, not today,” she said.
The resident said she contacted the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) to report the issue. However, her calls were either unanswered or the response has been less than satisfactory. She believes that the BWA’s Rapid Response Unit is needed now more than ever. The unit’s head Joy-Ann Haigh was among those made redundant in recent changes at the authority. According to Brooks, whenever she called the unit in the past she always received a quick response.
“The situation now is just horrible. It is disorganized. Actually, there is nobody to answer and when they do answer they say they would send a tanker and you still don’t see it. I mean it is bad enough that the problem exists, but it feels worse that you calling for a tanker and you are not getting any. It is very frustrating and I feel miserable and depressed about it because you can’t do anything, or plan anything.
“We don’t care what the problem is. We don’t care how you get it fixed, you are supposed to deliver to your customer. We don’t get water for free, we pay for it. Even though our pipe is off, the bill would not change,” Brooks said.
Meanwhile, an elderly resident said that she was tired of having to deal with the situation but she did not believe talking about it to the media would bring about a resolution.
When contacted BWA’s General Manager Keithroy Halliday told Barbados TODAY that just today, a customer service team visited the area asking residents about the outage. He said that while further investigations would have to be carried on the low water pressure, he was informed by a member of the customer service team that some residents said they stopped calling BWA because of the number of years they have had to live with the problem.
“We have to look for short and long-term solutions,” Halliday said.
A BWA customer service representative told Barbados TODAY that there was no record of complaints from the Redman Village area in recent days.
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