Gov’t Allots Funds to Provide Water to Portland Communities

The Government has allocated an additional $20 million to provide support to communities without water in Portland.

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, made the disclosure during a statement to the House of Representatives on Tuesday (May 9).

The funds are in addition to the $110 million in support to farmers, made through the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and the $130 million spent by the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation on trucking and the provision of tanks.

“We have given out 454, 200-gallon tanks and 260, 400-gallon tanks so far. In my budget presentation, I had made a commitment to give out a significant number of tanks. We are now at a point where I think we could easily give out 30,000 new tanks. So, we have been increasing the budgetary allocation in terms of providing black tanks to [citizens] Mr. Holness said.

Turning to the target of distributing 50,000 water tanks over five years, he said that the number will likely increase to 70,000.

“The reason why we are seeking to revise this figure, is just looking on what the next five years could look like in terms of rainfall. It is likely that we may not return to what our mean is, we may get close to it, but we may not return to it, so there would still be a deficit in supply,” he pointed out.

Prime Minister Holness said that householders must now make some investment in the storage and capture of water to complement flows from the utility service.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister told the House that the water harvesting guidelines have been finalised and will be brought to the Cabinet in the next two weeks for approval.

“Already, the municipal authorities require certain developments to have storage capacities. They are not giving building approvals in some areas unless you include how you’re going to store water. Most of the developments in Kingston and St. Andrew, they are required to have water storage,” he pointed out.

He noted that the rainwater harvesting guidelines will direct the various municipal authorities in making requirements of new housing and commercial developments.

“I do share the view that we should have some form of mandatory water harvesting, but bear in mind that not all developments can have water harvesting and not all rainfall should be harvested. Particularly, there are some areas, for example, that are close to mining, some areas that are close to toxic pollutants that you might have to be very careful about in terms of harvesting rainwater in those areas,” he said.

The Prime Minister appealed to all Jamaicans to conserve on the use of water.

“Our climate is changing, weather patterns, in particular rainfall patterns are shifting and becoming unpredictable. This means that infrastructure that was built to take advantage of long-standing flows would now be at risk of being obsolete or inadequate. On top of that, Jamaica’s water infrastructure is aged and not sufficient to produce and distribute water, according to our settlement patterns and our demands,” Mr. Holness said.

He reiterated that while the Government is working to improve water infrastructure, every citizen must begin to practice water conservation measures and make local household investments in water capture and storage.