“The water, mostly, goes everywhere but in the pipes.  Sometimes, for weeks on end, one must be content with seeing it cascading downhill or flowing through the bushes while it is needed in homes, in guest rooms, in businesses.

Often, an observant Good Samaritan who knows one of the maintenance workers may send a photo with the hope that the identified leaks/breaks would be urgently addressed.  

But it seems the maintenance workers often return to the same spots to fix the same breaks.  And both they and the public are weary:  

Weary of hoping.  Weary of begging for the resources to make things right.  Weary of fighting government higher-ups who are more impressed with their titles than their contributions.

Sometimes it appears so hopeless that a desperate public cries out in silence.

Certainly, a government ought to care if its public has potable water?

And it compounds the problem that due to years of neglect at BVIEC, the water producer must reduce use of electricity to ensure that general power outages are curtailed.

The Government’s preferred remedy, no surprise, is the same one that made the IMF infamous when unsuspecting countries fall into its crushing embrace.

Privatization!  (In our case, create a statutory body of which there are already legion.)

Would it help to properly and realistically fund and staff the Water and Sewage Department?

If the government follows through on its threat, they will have to allow the proposed authority to charge a fair price for its product.  If that happens, the ‘little man’ who, now, can hardly exist on his starvation wages, will be crushed.

BVI has a failing or nonexistent infrastructure that requires huge injections of funds to rectify.  Her Financial Secretary may have to call upon the Holy Ghost to steady his arm as he writes the checks that will add to a widening sea of red ink.

But it hurts the heart to see all this water going to waste when it is so desperately needed; When the pundits have predicted that the next world war will be fought over water rights.

 The Milagro Beanfield war; Singapore’s dependence on Malaysia to keep its reservoirs filled; the strangle hold on Egypt with the nearly completed colossal Ethiopia dam that can run the Nile dry; All reflect the importance of water to basic human survival.

And without the Nile, Egypt would cease to exist.

Bob Marley said it best in his ‘Rat Race:’

“.. In the abundance of water

The fool is thirsty.”

And we produce water in abundance.  

Does it matter that the state is throwing away our tax dollars by the millions to secure a commodity that runs on the streets instead of our pipes?

So, if we cannot quench our thirst; If we cannot feed ourselves; If we cannot protect ourselves; If we cannot install a quality road network to reflect our GDP; If we have no real control over our economic policy:

Are we ready for independence?

Are we ready for the reality of Fridays?

Happy Friday!”