East Trinidad water woes spark political victimisation debate

Res­i­dents and busi­ness op­er­a­tors across Mal­oney, Arou­ca and Ari­ma are grap­pling with an un­re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply, but opin­ions dif­fer on whether the is­sue amounts to po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion in con­stituen­cies rep­re­sent­ed by the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) or the peren­ni­al un­re­li­able ser­vice by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty.

While some be­lieve their com­mu­ni­ties are be­ing ne­glect­ed be­cause of their po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, oth­ers in­sist the prob­lem pre­dates the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion and re­flects long­stand­ing de­fi­cien­cies in the wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem.

Dur­ing a Guardian Me­dia vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ties on Fri­day, an Arou­ca res­i­dent who iden­ti­fied him­self on­ly as Whiskey said he viewed the sit­u­a­tion as po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.