REGULAR scheduled water lock-offs in the Kingston Metropolitan Region during periods of drought will be a thing of the past when the water system improvement programme is completed, according to minister with responsibility for water, Dr Horace Chang.

“By next year this time we expect to have no water lock-off at all, even if we have a severe drought,” Chang told the weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House on Wednesday.

This will be a result of Parliament’s approval of a Government Guarantee for loans totalling US$248 million to finance the Jamaican Water Supply Improvement Project (JWSIP).

Cabinet sanctioned an amendment to a previous loan agreement between the National Water Commission (NWC), the implementing agency for JWSIP, and the Bank of Nova Scotia in the amount of US$115 million; and a loan of US$133 million between the NWC and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The JWSIP is aimed at improving efficiency, quality and sustainability of the potable water services in the Kingston Metropolitan Areas as well as increased access in selected urban centres.

According to Chang, the water rehabilitation project will see to the rehabilitation of 29 functioning wells, changing out of a significant amount of leaking lines in residential areas as well as improvements to the water systems in Old Harbour, May Pen and Mandeville.

“In the earlier phase of this programme we are rehabilitating both the Mona and Hope water treatment plants and a significant amount of sewer collection systems downtown that leads to Soapberry,” Change said.

He said that by the end of the IDB-funded project, the entire Corporate Area water supply system would have been rehabilitated.

Meanwhile, Chang admitted that government was significantly behind in addressing the rural water woes as only 50 per cent of these areas have access to potable water.

“Urban water supply reaches about 90 per cent of the people, not necessarily in their houses but they have easy access to it, but we are still significantly behind in rural reach,” he said.

He explained further that the NWC has just completed a parish demand plan for the entire island and this is where the agency is looking at a potential expenditure of almost $80 billion.

However, the loan will also make it possible for work to be done on six major rural projects in Albert Town, Trelawny, Mile Gully in Central Manchester, New Market in St. Elizabeth and Mason Hall and Agualta Vale in St. Mary.

Addressing the worrying issue of the NWC not repairing roads dug up to install pipes, Chang said provisions were in this programme to address this vexing issue.

“The projects have finance in there for road maintenance,” he said.

He explained further that under the restructure of the NWC management, the portfolio of one of its vice-presidents deals specifically with reinstatement of roads. Additionally, there are engineers who are responsible for monitoring of these repairs to ensure the road is restored to a good quality.

The failure to repair the roads in past, he said, was initially a question of finance. “When it is done out of the NWC’s cash flow, which is severe, you may end up laying the pipes but don’t have the money to do the roads and so end up with a long period of the road being exposed,” he said

The minister also argued that it is not fair to require the NWC to spend billions in repairing roads which were already in a state of disrepair.

In the meantime, Chang said new technologies which would eliminate the need for massive disrepair to the roadways are currently being looked at with discussions already taking place with engineering partners in Japan and the United States.

“There has been introduced for residential areas, a thing called a non-trenching technology to install water pipes. It is not inexpensive but given the magnitude of the work we are doing it may justify us getting that kind of machine,” he said.

Chang also promised that mechanism would be in place to ensure there are no cost overruns at the commission.