Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has stated that as a matter of urgency, to address water shortages in the face of Covid-19, she has instructed the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) to deploy additional tankers and community tanks.
During an interview at Ilaro Court today, the Prime Minister, in response to a question of what assurance could be given to residents that they would have access to frequent running water, said: “We’ve made it very clear that tankers, more community tanks and individual tanks have to be deployed as a matter of urgency this week where possible.”
In addition, there had been meetings with Carlisle Laboratories and others to discuss the sourcing and bottling of sanitizing liquids to provide to those communities that may not have sufficient running water, she disclosed.
It was also revealed that in order to bring water to those parts of the island that may be without, the Government, through protracted negotiations, had acquired two temporary desalination plants, but “with the best crews in the world, I’m told that there is still an eight to 10-week exercise to get those operational,” Ms. Mottley said.
The Prime Minister noted that her office had been receiving daily briefings from the BWA, which included the impact Barbados’ water supply has suffered over the last year as a result of drought conditions.
To emphasize how severely the drought had impacted the island’s water supply, Ms. Mottley said that a report from the Technical Advisor to the BWA Board, Dr. John Mwansa, had revealed that there was only three feet of water in the well at Bowmanston, St. John, and not the 17 feet that would normally be recorded at this time of year.