MONTEGO BAY, St James — Janet, who lives in an area of Barrett Town called Saigon, is among 2,000 National Water Commission (NWC) customers in St James who are still without water after last October’s passage of Hurricane Melissa.

For her, it does not matter that water has been restored to almost 95 per cent of the NWC’s 49,840 customers in the parish and that the commodity is being trucked, at no cost to customers, still without supply.

Janet, who only gave her first name, told the Jamaica Observer she has to pay her own way.

“It’s only certain people alone get truck water. You see like we now, who not getting the Government water, we have to buy water,” she lamented.

“$15,000, $9,000, $8,000, a dem money deh to full the tank. Mine is 400 gallons; it’s $8,000 to full one,” she added.

Janet said if she does laundry, a full tank lasts for two weeks; it can stretch a bit further if she doesn’t but even then, the cost of water makes the current situation unsustainable.

“We have to ration it,” Janet declared.

She said despite being in the tourism belt, water is only at the beginning of Barrett Town, and she doesn’t see any effort being made to ensure a reliable supply is available to the hundreds of homes in her area.

However, NWC Acting Corporate Public Relations Manager Delano Williams insists the company is doing the best it can, and reeled off steps the utility company has already take to alleviate the pressure being felt by residents of not only Barrett Town but the entire parish.

“The NWC acknowledges the significant inconvenience and hardship being experienced by residents, and wishes to assure the community that all feasible measures are being taken to restore service as quickly and safely as possible,” Williams told the Observer.

Major systems such as the Great River Water Treatment Plant and Martha Brae, which supply St James, were impacted by the Category 5 storm which hit Jamaica on October 28, 2025.

“The need for water has been the driving force behind our restoration efforts, and so our activities have been focused on identifying and deploying the resources as quickly as possible,” Williams stressed.

“This has required moving our teams from eastern parishes to assist with trucking, sourcing and deploying generators, and completing repairs as quickly and safely as needed,” he added.

For an extended period the NWC led the charge with the trucking of water, especially to critical infrastructure such as hospitals. However, with the majority of the supply and distribution networks back on stream, Williams explained that the company is now pushing towards full restoration.

“This commitment continues as we aim to complete the final segment of customers who are not yet receiving piped supply,” he said.

The NWC’s two areas of focus are Cambridge, which Williams said is at 50 per cent in terms of restoration, and Barrett Town where Janet lives. Williams said that community suffered extensive damage to the pipeline network, and the NWC has done a lot of work in the area.

“Technical assessments have confirmed that approximately 500 metres of pipeline infrastructure were severely damaged, with sections of the roadway completely washed out during the passage of Hurricane Melissa. This level of damage makes short-term reinstallation of the pipeline unsafe and impractical,” he explained.

“As a result, the NWC has commenced an alternate interim solution which involves the installation of a re-lift pumping system from the main road to redistribute water into the Barrett Town community. This approach requires civil works, pump installation, and electromechanical retrofitting — a process that typically takes four to six weeks to complete,” Williams added.

He said the NWC is actively exploring ways to shorten this time frame, where possible, without compromising safety or reliability, and insisted that the community has been placed on a trucking schedule to alleviate the challenges until their issues can be rectified.

“The National Water Commission is advising residents of Barrett Town, St James, that as restoration works continue following Hurricane Melissa, an adjusted and formal water trucking schedule has been implemented to provide more reliable and predictable relief to the community,” Williams said.

“This scheduled approach will replace the previous ‘as needs’ trucking arrangement, and is intended to ensure residents have more consistent access to potable water while longer-term infrastructure works are carried out. Under the revised arrangements, water trucking deliveries for the Barrett Town community are scheduled for Wednesdays,” he disclosed.

WILLIAMS…the NWC acknowledges the significant inconvenience and hardship being experienced by residents