As the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) works to restore water to thousands of customers affected by outages, the Acting Minister of Transport, Works and Water Resources, Dr Romel Springer, is reassuring residents that all is being done following much needed repairs.
The Minister was giving an update on day three of the emergency work at the Belle Pumping Station, where workmen encountered some issues that have set back the repair work by several hours.
Springer pointed out that the platform supporting the pumps was not easy to disassemble and workmen encountered issues that prevented the damaged structure from being easily removed. This hiccup, he said, delayed the repair work by an additional five to six hours.
“We were able to reconnect the pumps to the distribution network and we are expecting to start the removal of two other pumps and the repair of their support structure.”
As to outages, he said: “We have been getting reports of outages in a number of areas and now that the pumps are offline, we expect an increase in the number of reports of outages by this afternoon when the reserves in the reservoirs start to go down. All customers in the affected districts will not lose their service at the same time and we have put a system in place where the BWA will be deploying tankers to the affected areas. Customers can also call the BWA customer service number 434-4292.”
Springer urged affected householders to store and conserve water, while the crews work to restore supply to those impacted. (BGIS)