ALBERT TOWN, Trelawny – Nestled in the Cockpit Country where it enjoys an abundance of rainfall, Albert Town High School, established in 1969, has been forced to dig deep to pay $40,000 twice weekly for water trucked to the facility in recent times.

But when the school reopens for the new academic year in September, all those expenses will be a thing of the past, thanks to the newly-established rain water harvesting system which has been implement by the Rural Water Supply at a cost of $4.5 million.

A gleeful acting Principal Janice Skeen Miller is appreciative of the Government’s gesture to implement the water system to ease the financial constraints of the secondary learning institution, which boast a student population of 729. There are 54 teachers, 20 members of the ancillary staff, as well as 10 administrative staff members.

“I want to express my gratitude for this tank that will add over 20,000 gallons to our supplies. The truth is, for the past 20 years we have been without water, since NWC no longer has pipes coming to Albert Town. And so, the addition of 20,000 gallons will serve to prevent us from having to be buying loads of water, being transported from Falmouth or Christiana, at a cost of over $40,000 per load,” Skeen Miller said.

She added: “And so we’re really grateful for this initiative, and I’m confident that it will serve to benefit us as teachers and the student body. We are thankful and we trust that the students and teachers will use it and be grateful for the fact that we no longer have to spend all that money on water.”

Chairman of the school board, Winston Foster, who is also a past student of the institution, also expressed his appreciation.

“I would like to say we are very, very appreciative of this project because for me personally, as a past student, and as chairman for the board, I would have, as a student, experienced some of these problems that we have. It was one of our commitment as a board that under my tenure this is one more problem that we would want to see solved,” Foster noted.

“And today [Thursday], we’re happy that it has come to pass. We are now able to relieve the stress and the anxiety of our staff and our students and other stakeholders that would have come about as a result of us not having enough water,” he further noted.

Mayor of Falmouth Councillor C Junior Gager (Jamaica Labour Party, Warsop Division), who is not only a past student but a former board member, profusely thanked Matthew Samuda, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, who has portfolio responsibility for water, for making the rain water harvesting system at the school a reality.

“We get our fair share of rain water here in south Trelawny. Harvesting is the problem and sometimes the water just goes to waste. So you’ll have heavy showers but there is nothing to really capture that. You [Samuda] have brought something that will touch the lives of over 700 students attending this school. It is projects like these which we look forward to. Thank you for giving us this great gift. It is appreciated,” Gager said.

For his part, Samuda underscored that the education sector experienced massive learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, steps had to be taken to prevent further losses stemming from a severe drought experienced between October and March.

“We’ve had some schools which had interruptions because of water supply coming out of COVID. This Government will not allow that. We will make investments in the capacity of water storage right across the length and breadth of this country, especially in rural schools, to ensure not an hour of learning loss can be attributed to water supply,” Samuda emphasised.

“We know we have a lot of ground to make up in a very short period of time. And the hard-working men and women of Rural Water are working around the clock to ensure that we build the projects properly,” he added.

Managing director of Rural Water Supply Limited Audley Thompson, who noted that “Mayor Gager, a former board member, who was one of the individuals that championed for the project”, said the new system, which consists of a 20,000-gallon concrete tank, guttering, both concrete and off the roof; about 350 feet of PVC piping, eight black tanks and a pumping system, complements the system already in place at the school.

“This system, minister, is a system that complements what they had before because they had something before and what this will do, this will save the school in relation to costs of trucking water. Projects like this, minister, is what we have been doing since 2012. And I’m just telling you that we have actually done approximately 100 all across the island,” Thompson said.