Opposition Leader Mark Golding has criticised the position taken by Cabinet Minister Matthew Samuda for the National Water Commission (NWC) to bypass the local health board in the submission of water quality reports, calling it “childish and petty”.
Golding, who was speaking at a People’s National Party (PNP) meeting in Milk River, Clarendon, at the weekend, said the Andrew Holness-led administration was peeved with the move by Jesse James Clarke, the chairman of the Public Health and Sanitisation Committee of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC), to “expose” the poor-water-quality issue in a section of rural St Andrew.
“The Government never like the fact that this was being exposed, and instead of being transparent about it and say, ‘yeah, we’re looking at it and we have a plan to remediate it to protect the public’.
“No, what have they done? The NWC said they’re not going to attend the meetings anymore of the KSAMC and then they had to adjust that position and the most recent position I heard [is] well they will attend but they’re not going to share the test results. They’re going to publish it on a website,” said Golding.
Clarke, a PNP councillior and microbiology and food quality lecturer, had raised concerns in March about the safety of the water in Kingston and St Andrew, following an NWC report that was shared with KSAMC.
He said water samples returned a high number of positive results for faecal coliform, a type of bacteria that indicates that the water has been contaminated with faeces, which could pose a serious public health concern.
The opposition councillor for the Trafalgar Division said out of the number of samples that was tested, less than five per cent of samples should be positive for faecal coliform.
“They’re having, like, 27 per cent positive. They know they’re having issues,” Clarke had said.
The disclosure caused the NWC to cease attending the committee meetings and the state-run entity later informed KSAMC in a letter in April that it would send reports to the Ministry of Health and Wellness instead of the local authority.
Samuda, the minister responsible for water, supported the stance, noting that there was no legal basis for NWC representatives to attend the committee meetings.
Further, he said the water quality reports would be shared via government websites.
“To me, that is childish and petty. That’s not the way to run a country,” said Golding.
He said transparency requires sharing the information with the relevant body which has statutory responsibilities for the issue.
“And we have another issue, I believe, in Dunn’s River, to do with water quality as well. This Government wants to cover things up rather than deal with them frontally. You build confidence by being open and honest about things and adopting an approach that is pragmatic and sensible to resolve them. You don’t build confidence pushing things under the carpet,” said Golding.
