KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) caretaker for St Thomas Eastern Delano Seiveright says that the National Water Commission (NWC) must regularly truck water to schools in the constituency, if the Government is to avoid a heightened health crisis caused by a chronic lack of water in most areas.

“As it stands now, many basic and primary schools are without water,” Seiveright said in a media release early Monday, on his experiences with the reopening of schools in the constituency for the Christmas term.

His comments contradict a statement from the Ministry of Education which had suggested that the school year was off to a smooth start in the parish.

Seiveright said requests by some teachers and administrators for parents to have children carry water to school for flushing of toilets and other uses, will pose challenges given the gross lack of water in the region place.

He said that he had donated water tanks to the St Thomas Technical High School and the Duckenfield and Dalvey Primary schools, but the schools are severely constrained by difficulties in having the tanks filled and the theft of water by some desperate residents reduced.

Seiveright also urged the NWC to address the challenges of the Apple Farm/Duckenfield/Arcadia Water Supply System, supplied by the Apple Farm spring source, which has run dry severely affecting thousands of residents.

He suggested that, as a temporary measure, the NWC could access 50 feet of ground water on the old Eastern Banana property in Golden Grove, by simply installing a pump and the relevant connections.

Balford Henry