Sto­ry by SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The UNC’s Can­di­date for Ca­roni Cen­tral, Arnold Ram, says wa­ter woes are just one of the ma­jor is­sues that have been plagu­ing the peo­ple of Freeport—and Ca­roni Cen­tral—for the past five years.

Ram was speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, as he can­vassed the Siew­dass Road area.

A lawyer by pro­fes­sion, Arnold Ram was cho­sen by the UNC screen­ing com­mit­tee to re­place Dr Bhoe Ti­warie, the cur­rent MP.

He told Guardian Me­dia that res­i­dents have com­plained of get­ting a wa­ter sup­ply on­ly once a fort­night. He says this has a ma­jor im­pact on the many farm­ers in the area.

“The prob­lem is com­pound­ed fur­ther be­cause of the num­ber of pipelines that need re­plac­ing,” he notes. “Apart from that, WASA ex­tracts a large raw wa­ter sup­ply from Freeport that is chan­nelled for treat­ment and most­ly dis­trib­uted to com­mu­ni­ties out­side the Freeport area,” he added.

The UNC can­di­date said the area al­so is rid­dled with bad roads be­cause of the lim­it­ed fund­ing re­ceived by the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

On the up­side, Ram said he was hap­py to get the good news that so­ca artiste, Machel Mon­tano, is as­so­ci­at­ed with the con­struc­tion of the tem­ple at Siew­dass Road.