Mark Wignall | Dirty water and petty politics
Published:Wednesday | August 15, 2018 | 12:00 AM
Last Thursday, I awoke at my usual time of minutes to 5 a.m. At 7:30 I took a shower and immediately after, went to the kitchen to mill some roasted beans in preparation for brewing my coffee.
While filling a glass for measuring I was far from pleased, though not shocked at the colour of the water: it was brownish as if mud had made its way into the water supply. I live on the rise going up to Red Hills and it is typical that whenever there is a leak on the roadway and repairs are done, it seems almost inevitable that muddy water will make its way into the system.
I am certain that no repairs were being carried out at that early hour and, because the water was colourless the evening before, I was somewhat puzzled. No coffee for me that morning and, prepared to live with the reality that small particles of dirt had to have been on my body, I opened the fridge, removed a small, half-filled bottle of WATA and used it to brush my teeth.
SECOND TO NONE QUALITY
When I worked on the docks in the early to mid-1970s, it was typical that ships traversing the Caribbean and needing drinking water would deliberately avoid Mexican and Central American ports and take on the precious fluid in Jamaica because the quality of our water was second to none.
Now, in my home, if the water poured into a glass is clear and visually clean, after drinking, if the glass is just left there to dry out on its own, a thin, powdery white film is left on the inner surface. What is that? When I attempted to contact a spokesman from the National Water Commission I was told that the company would need to do checks before a proper response could be given.
Meanwhile, in our 'ray ray' politics, the quality is probably on par with our degraded water. Robert Nesta Morgan, communication guru in the PM's office, is in a childish jab with Dr Dayton Campbell on Twitter.
He tweets, 'Dayton please advise us if what they are saying is false. You are an asset to the PNP we cannot afford your removal. This must be a horrible rumour'. My friend Mr Morgan probably meant to say that Dr Campbell is an asset to the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) but in his rush of pettiness he used PNP (People's National party) instead of JLP.
Of course, Dr Campbell responded in like fashion. 'OONUH AGUH TYAD FI SE ME FACE BUT OONUH CANT GET OUT OF THE RACE SO YU CA. GWANE DRAW BAD CARD.'
I am assuming that Dr Campbell is saying that the JLP cannot get him out of the race, but, in his effort to keep within what the temper tantrum required, he has even invented a new spelling for 'gwaan.'
Meanwhile, JLP Gen Sec Dr Horace Chang told a captive audience of JLP supporters at a primary school in South East St Catherine that the PNP has done nothing but 'make noise and mash up the country' during its 22 years in power from 1989 to 2007 and 2011 to 2016.
According to Chang, "When the PNP run the country poverty increases, crime increases, the road them mash up, the schools fall apart, and the country ran into great difficulty. It is Andrew Holness who is trying to put back and take us from poverty to prosperity. The people of Jamaica saw in him a leader who focuses on getting a better life for people."
Go ahead, gentlemen. You seem comfortable in keeping our political debate in muddy waters.