GLENDEVON, St James — The Government will be embarking on a programme to set up a database of all National Water Commission (NWC) connections across the island.

Minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation with responsibility for water, Dr Horace Chang, while addressing a community meeting at the Glendevon Skills Training Centre in St James, last Thursday, said the aim of the programme is to map all water connections islandwide into a single database.

Dr Chang said five to six people from each constituency will be employed to undertake the job.

“(It is) one of the programmes we are undertaking this year as a water commissioner and partly Government programme… when we say digitise government, we are going to send a team out of some 350 young people, trained, with varying technology. I don’t understand it as you may do, but (they will go out) with smartphones and we are going to map all the water connections throughout the island.

“So, we can put it up on a map and have electronic connections so that when things are leaking, we will know from a central point,” Dr Chang explained.

“It is very easy to do, because you have conduits all over. But, we don’t know where they are, quite frankly, as a company. So, we are going to map them this year,” he said.

The minister said more information will be given on the programme during his budget debate presentation in Parliament.