Two separate but yet related matters sparked my attention this past week. First, there was the predictable hue and cry from “professional opposers” to the increase in water rates. Second, there was Barrack Jagdeo swiping and getting clean bowled by his fellow countrymen.
It is clear to me that if water rates had been increased by five cents a gallon the reaction of some in our midst would have been the same.
What took the cake for me in the gas station last Sunday afternoon was this known Barbados Labour Party operative and spokesman who approached me, in their usual arrogant and bombastic manner, claiming that “the new water rates will kill poor people”.
My intended response would have been to set forth the argument in favour of the need for an increase in rates, given the magnitude of the capital development programme about to be undertaken by the Authority as well as the ongoing desire to enhance both the quality of and accessibility to the resource. I am sure I could have made a compelling argument, but this gentleman gave me the perfect opening when, in approaching me he armed himself with nothing less than a two litre bottle of water, which, from the label, I became aware was bottled in Trinidad and Tobago.
I deliberately asked him to buy me a similar drink, because quietly I wanted to discover the price he had so willingly paid a few seconds ago for imported drinking water. The price at the register was $3.40.
He did not bash an eye lid. For himself and more importantly for a known political nemesis, he shelled out $6.80 for four litres of imported, Trinidad and Tobago water. Then, he resumed his argument. “David Thompson is killing poor people. How they expect poor people to survive? When you increase water by 60 per cent you in effect declare war on poor people”.
He went on and on and I sipped on my well chilled Trinidad and Tobago water, without saying a word. At the end of his ranting I suggested to him that there was a small detail I needed to work out and that coincidentally, he may just have provided me with the basis for my next newspaper column.
So, bright and early on Tuesday morning, I called the Barbados Water Authority and first confessed my Mathematical shortcoming, as I had referenced in a previous article, and asked that they work out for me the cost, using the new rate structure, of a litre of Barbados water.
I wanted to find out what ‘the poor man’ was paying for a litre of water in Barbados as well as what was being asked of those in the highest Block on the rate scale. Remember, the protagonist in the gas station was comfortable paying $3.40 for two litres, which worked out at $1.70 per litre of drinking water from Trinidad and Tobago, which, incidentally, is not known for the purity of its water.
Even before I spoke to the Chairman of the BWA, Dr. Atlee Brathwaite or the General Manager, Mr. Denis Yearwood, I recalled recent lunch and dinner engagements on the south and west coasts of Barbados at which my sponsors, and on one or two occasions, yours truly paid, somewhat painfully, up to $11 for a two litre bottle of high ranked French and Canadian water.
This water, to be honest, tasted no better than what we get from Bowmanston Pumping Station on the border of St. George and St. John, but, the retail establishments were offering it at $11 a bottle and a ‘dummy’ like me paid that sort of money for it.
So I had a clear idea in my head what extra-regional water imported into Barbados was going for and what regional water was also being sold at. What was interesting is that the water that I consider to be the best tasting in the Caribbean, if not the world, which runs through the valleys of Dominica, was completely absent from the equation.
Nevertheless, I contacted officials of the BWA and was surprised, indeed, flabbergasted to hear that the litre of water from Trinidad that my BLP acquaintance paid $1.70 for and the litre from France and Canada that my dinner host and I paid $5.50 for, was actually available in limitless quantities here in Barbados for the grand price of $0.0025 per litre.
In other words, David Thompson and his new Democratic Labour Party Government are ‘killing poor people in Barbados’ with the new rate of point two-five cents per litre for water. Simply put, poor persons in Barbados are now being asked as of July 1st to pay one cent for four litres of water. That is what those at the bottom of the rate structure are paying; One solitary cent for four litres of water!
Those at the top are paying $0.0078 per litre or an average of five cents for six litres of water. This is the new rate that ‘professional opposers’ are beating the government over.
Yet, these said people are willingly and without murmur, paying $1.70 for a litre of Trinidad and Tobago water, which, as I intimated before, has never and is unlikely ever to win an award for its natural purity or processing. They also wine and dine on the south and west coast each day, paying in excess of $5.50 for the said litre of water. But, with that they find no fault.
I am told also of the Knighted gentleman who has been compiling statistics for use by a certain lady in her opposition to the new one cent per four litre rate. I look forward to that debate, because a few embarrassing truths will come to light.
The point remains, however, that Barbadians are spending in excess of $3 million a month on water, of questionable quality, imported from parts unknown. There is never a murmur or even a squeak in opposition to the ridiculous prices that are charged for this imported bottled water, but the said consumers of this product are on the rampage about paying a quarter of a cent for a litre of their own lime-stone derived liquid gold.
Something has got to be fundamentally wrong with the thinking of our people when they allow blinded, partisan, political loyalty to cloud their vision and perspective in matters of this nature.
Space has ran out and therefore I will have to defer dealing with my second point pertaining to the forwardness of Barrack Jagdeo and his sidekick in the Barbados media.
Next week also, we shall examine how Prime Minister David Thompson has grown in stature, right before our very eyes.
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