YEAR AFTER year at the height of summer, the advisory from the National Water Commission, directed especially at residents of the Corporate Area of Kingston and St. Andrew, is the same - water is scarce, please conserve.
Last week Donald Buchanan, the Minister of Water and Housing, appealed to citizens to increase their water-conservation efforts and ensure that there is little or no wastage in their households as this would assist in reducing the need to implement further water restrictions and help to alleviate water shortage problems in several areas. His ministry's Rapid Response tankers are trucking water to areas throughout the island which have been hard hit by drought, or as the National Meteorological Service prefers, water scarcity. The National Met. Service will decide this week whether to declare an official drought.
In the Corporate Area in the meantime, the level of the Mona Reservoir which is at 58 per cent of capacity, is not increasing, and that of the Hermitage Dam which is at 78 per cent of capacity, is falling steadily. Manchester and the adjoining parish of St. Elizabeth are said to be experiencing particularly dry spells.
During severe droughts in the past, the powers that be have sought to solve the problem through interventions ranging from special church services to pray for rain, to the suggestion of using cloud-seeding technology. Rain falls, whether by divine intervention or not, and a more practical solution to the problem seems to be forgotten.
There is no denial that over the years successive governments have completed dozens of projects to provide potable water to rural communities. But the projects have neither been widespread nor rapid enough. It seems that almost every week citizens in different parts of the island, out of sheer frustration with unfulfilled political promises, block roads to press their demand for piped water, if not in their homes, in their communities. And pity the poor farmers of St. Elizabeth and other drought-prone bread-basket parishes who year after year see their crops perish and their money and labour go to waste for want of irrigation water.
Still, every so often, especially at election time, the politicians are heard spouting their intention to draft Water Sector Strategies and Action Plans and Water Sector Policies.
What citizens want is less talk and more implementation. It wouldn't be a bad idea for the Minister of Water, when the sectoral debate continues, to bring the nation up-to-date on the government plans, with input from the Parish Councils, to tackle the provision of potable and irrigation water in a tangible way that anchors even the most rural of citizen firmly into the 21st century.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
