The Tribune

By Fay Simmons

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

Cabinet ministers and MPs were among government officials that toured Eleuthera’s reverse osmosis plants over the weekend following a two-week water supply crisis.

Clay Sweeting, minister of works and Family Island affairs, along with Leon Lundy, minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office with responsibility for the Water and Sewerage Corporation, also held a Town Hall meeting with residents to discuss the disruption

“The time for action is now. The water crisis in Eleuthera has plagued our community for too long, and we cannot afford to delay any longer,” said Mr Sweeting “We must work together, shoulder to shoulder, to address and resolve this critical issue once and for all.”

During the Town Hall meeting, residents discussed short-term interventions and long-term solutions to ensure a sustainable water supply. Mr Sweeting, who is also MP for Central and South Eleuthera, maintained yesterday during his contribution in Parliament that the Government is “committed” to resolving the water issues that he “inherited”.

He said: “The people of Eleuthera deserve the best. The member for North Eleuthera and myself inherited these failing systems, and to correct the issues and provide stability going forward  the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of the Bahamas is committed to doing what is necessary to fix it. We are committed to utilising every resource in our collective arsenal to tackle these problems head on.”

Adrian Gibson, MP for Long Island and the Water & Sewerage Corporation’s executive chairman during the former Minnis administration, said it, too, inherited the contracts drafted with Aqua Design,the reverse osmosis plant operator, under the former Ingraham administration

He maintained the water crisis was made worse by the Davis administration choosing not to bring the Waterford plant in South Eleuthera online, which he asserted was “brand new” when he left office and is now “parked in the bushes”.

Mr Gibson said: “When we left office a brand new plant was installed in South Eleuthera, Waterford to be exact. It was to be brought online. We left office with that to be brought online…

“Since that time, that plant has been uprooted from Waterford and I have photographs of a brand new plant [where] hundreds of thousands of dollars is parked in the bushes in Central Eleuthera and not in use… in the bushes…this is a plant that could have resolved much of the water issues in Eleuthera.”

Mr Gibson also acknowledged that the contracts with Aqua Design were “very bad contracts”, but suggested that the Davis administration is currently renegotiating the deals with Aqua Design and considering selling the existing Water and Sewerage plants in Eleuthera to the firm.

He said: “Granted, Madam Speaker, these contracts are very bad contracts. Aqua Design has a monopoly in Eleuthera, and four different locations in Eleuthera… Aqua Design runs the entire I couldn’t believe it… that one company was given a monopoly on this island, and all of the contracts - all but one - was signed by a PLP government; the other was signed by the Ingraham administration in 2011.

“However, many of the contracts for those plants are currently due, and I understand that either the Government has signed those plants over or is thinking to. I have also come to understand that the Government is selling the plants that Water and Sewerage owns to the very company, Aqua Design, that is causing all this problems in Eleuthera.”