BBC donates bottled water

THE Barbados Bottling Company Limited (BBC) has donated much-needed drinking water to the residents of St. Joseph, St. John and St. Thomas impacted by water outages.

General Manager of BBC, Andre Thomas, presented the first instalment of the donation – 350 cases of bottled water – to Parliamentary Representatives Dale Marshall, Charles Griffith, and Cynthia Forde at the Grantley Adams School, recently.

Thomas said that Barbados Bottling Company Limited was very pleased to be able to assist residents, expressing, “We understand how trying and difficult it is.

“This is just the first instalment; we will do a lot more as time goes on. And we encourage other companies throughout the island to do such – whether it is containers for storage, water… We encourage you to do as much as possible for not only the people of St. Joseph, St. Thomas and St. John, but Barbados as a whole.”

The MP for St. Thomas thanked the BBC team for their commitment, dedication, and service to Barbados. She pointed to communities which have been heavily impacted by the water outages, in some instances for the last three to four weeks.

“And so, this particular injection here today will add to creating some measure of comfort, because there was no easy aspect of treating to it over the last few days as the challenge was so tremendous,” Forde stressed.

“So, I want to say how thankful we are for this injection of water – the constituents and representatives here from St. Joseph, St. John and myself to the BBC who have come to our rescue. Because we need water as one of the most essential things in life, and this has been an extremely powerful aspect of giving at this time when we are facing these challenges.”

MP Forde also took the opportunity to appeal to Barbadians to conserve water. She said there are persons who have been continuously washing down their houses every day of the ash coming from the La Soufrière volcano.

“Barbados is a water-scarce country and the levels in some of the reservoirs are low and therefore I would want to encourage my Barbadian friends and others to please let us see if we can do less washing down at this time because the ash is still coming... I have seen some communities in St. Thomas washing down every morning, and then there are other people who have no water to cook, to clean...

“I am going to beg those persons to please desist from the constant washing down. Yes, you have to wash down if you have animals, but on the other hand you are washing down for animals but then there are animals in the field that get no water because of the shortage we are experiencing. And I know that Government is doing its best through the Barbados Water Authority and other agencies to see how they can mitigate these matters as time goes by,” she assured.

“At the end of it all when we get minimal ash coming in, then people can tidy up and clean up, but right now it is really unconscionable for some of the same households to be doing it Monday to Friday and then there are other communities Monday to Friday not getting any water because it is all coming from the very same source.”