‘Run water agency from rates collected’ – Hon Julian Fraser RA
Honourable Fraser posted the message on his Facebook page on January 13, 2016 following a walkabout in Sea Cows Bay with Minister for Communications and Works Honourable Mark H. Vanterpool (R4) earlier that day.
“Today the Minister responsible for water took the time and went through Sea Cows Bay and Pleasant Valley to see for himself that the people were not getting water,” wrote Honourable Fraser.
According to him, the Minister “could not be happy with what he saw” as there were broken pipes rendering whole neighbourhoods “waterless for days” and the staff promising to have them fixed within days.
He said too that it was found that valves left turned off “because someone forgot to turn them back on,” again leaving whole neighbourhoods without water for days.
The former Minister for Communications and Works, Honourable Fraser, who successfully negotiated the Biwater deal to eliminate water woes in the territory but has seen his efforts resisted by Government's slothfulness in putting the necessary infrastructure in place as part of the deal for Biwater to distribute water across the island, said the people in Pleasant Valley could not get water because the pipe crossing the ghut at the bridge is broken. He noted that the Minister told him it would be repaired in the coming days.
“[These things the Minister] had to go and discover for himself today (January 13, 2016), after being told since Sunday January 10, 2016 that there was no water in the area,” he said.
The Third District Representative said there has to be a better way to ensure accountability and to ensure people are serviced with water.
“I think it is time that the revenue collected from water be used to run the agency (including salaries); responsible for supplying customers with water, much as is the case with electricity. No, water no money. This is the only way I see us stopping the practice of having whole neighbourhoods waterless for days, and sometimes weeks,” said Honourable Fraser.
Honourable Fraser had asked the question whether the water woes, which the people of the Third District are facing, were “natural or deliberate” and whether the difficulties were a deliberate attempt on the part of the National Democratic Party (NDP) Government to damage the reputation of BiWater, which Honourable Fraser brought to the territory during the last Virgin Islands Party (VIP) administration.
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