Claremont, Hanover – Amidst a reported onslaught of complaints, Eastern Hanover’s member of parliament, Barrington Gray, has appealed to the National Water Commission to truck water to the communities in his constituency that have been without the commodity for several weeks.

The areas affected, the Jamaica Labour Party MP said, include:

. Shepherd Hall and Friendship;

. Chigwell and Claremont;

. Patty Hill and Rejoin; as well as

. Success and Cash Hill.

“Residents in these communities are suffering, because there is no potable water in the areas and the NWC trucks are not taking water there on a regular basis,” Gray told the Observer.

Most of the affected communities were getting water from wayside tanks but, lately, the NWC has not replenished the tanks. The result, the MP said, has been that his constituency office in Hopewell has been bombarded with calls from constituents, wanting to know when they would get water.

Meanwhile, the Cold Spring Basic School had to close its doors for at least one day this week due to the absence of piped water. And on Tuesday, residents in sections of the constituency attributed the double murder of Andreika James and Samuel Lawrence to the lack of water in the Claremont district. The two had gone to Kew District, three miles away, to fetch water for domestic use when they were shot and killed, execution-style.

A NWC source has, in the interim, told the Observer that some of its units that usually supply the affected communities were out of service. However, he said that one unit was recently deployed to deliver water to some of the affected communities.

But until the NWC remedies the problem, Gray said, he would make arrangements to hire private trucks to deliver water to the communities in order to ease their plight.