By Andrew Smith, Staff ReporterJAMAICA'S MAYORS believe that the Parish Councils are given insufficient resources to provide water to their communities. Speaking at The Gleaner Company's recent Editors' Forum, the country's Mayors identified the economic constraints present in providing social water as a pressing issue.
PROVISION OF 'MINOR WATER'
Parish Councils and the National Water Commission (NWC) are the two main agencies responsible for providing water across Jamaica. Parish Councils provide "minor water" to communities through entombment springs, catchment tanks and wayside tanks through a system characterised by a lack of connection inside houses. The NWC provides piped water using constructed systems of pumps and lines. For these services, the NWC charges fees, while for the Parish Councils, in the words of Donovan Stanberry, Chief Technical Director in the Ministry of Water and Housing, "there is no cost recovery possible".
Mayor Milton Brown of May Pen believes that this situation has resulted in an injustice being done to the Parish Councils. He says, "the economic section of supplying water is with the National Water Commission and we have been handed the social non-economic section without funding or with very inadequate funding, and the people in these areas do need the water." He referred to a community which pleaded desperately for the restoration of water. The cost to do so was $300,000.00, funds which the Parish Council had a problem finding.
Mayor Robert 'Bobby' Monta-que of Port Maria reinforces the need for more funds. In St. Mary last year, "We got $3 million to run (our water department) to pay staff, to truck water, to maintain the systems, to do everything. We spent last year almost $9 million on water. We just cannot sustain it."
Other expenses arise when the entombment springs dry up. In these cases, the services of the Rapid Response Unit (RRU) is required. Although the RRU was set up primarily to provide water to communities served by neither the NWC or the Parish Councils, there are times when both agencies have to contract the services of the RRU, at times resulting in the Parish Councils being unable to obtain these services. Accor-ding to Mayor Montaque, "we have a situation where we do not have any water trucks so we have to be hiring trucks, and most times when we try to hire from Rapid Response Unit they don't have any trucks and they are taken up doing the NWC work."
TRANSFERRING OR RECOUPING?
Some of the Mayors indicated a desire for the NWC to take control of the island's entire water needs. Mayor of Spanish Town Raymoth Notice said: "I think the National Water Commission should have total control of the supply and distribution of water." This was reinforced by Mayor Montaque, who, in reference to schemes which should have paying customers, he said that the problems of collection were such that, "we are looking at it to just hand these schemes to the NWC, just take them and go on with them. It is cheaper to give them away than to even attempt to negotiate for one dollar for them."
Would the NWC be in a position to take over the provision of minor water from the Parish Councils?
Charles Buchanan, NWC
Corporate Public Relations Manager, doubts that possibility. The reasons given include the economic costs which would be required to upgrade the current minor water system of gravity-fed pumps and catchment tanks to match the NWC's current system which incorporates
electrical pumps and chlorination. These would also have to meet the stringent regulations of the Office of Utility Regulations (OUR). Even now, monthly fees meet only 80 per cent of the over J$500 million which represent the NWC's operating costs.
In addition, due to the sparse population density of the communities served by minor water, it is not economically feasible in many cases to put in place these expensive renovations. Mr. Buchanan also feared that even if the NWC took over the supply of minor water, collection of fees would be difficult, given the tradition of not paying for water. He also stated that an argument for keeping the supply of minor water under the auspices of the Parish Council was that the close proximity to the community enabled greater responsiveness for water provision.
Since the chances of the NWC taking responsibility for minor water supply seems extremely low, the Parish Councils will have to find a way of covering their costs. Mayor Brown is looking at establishing "water shops". These are facilities whereby, "we will be maintaining the water supply, particularly the catchment areas where we have large tanks, and we will be aiming to recoup some of the maintenance cost from the users of the facilities."
