The Tribune

ALL the water at the Water & Sewerage Corporation must be boiling over considering how heated things are getting over there.

On Tuesday night, many people found as they turned their taps at home or work that nothing came out. From Fox Hill to Elizabeth, Princess Margaret Hospital to Soldier Road, areas north, south, east and west found themselves affected by interruptions to the power supply.

Even here at The Tribune, off went the water as our staff went about producing the next day’s paper.

People took to social media to complain about the Water & Sewerage Corporation – and might have been surprised to find chairman Adrian Gibson doing the same. He posted to Facebook to claim that workers were illegally shutting down the water supply, and teams were being sent out under police escort to turn it back on.

Yesterday in the House of Assembly, he repeated that claim and said any employee found to have tampered with the water supply would be fired and reported to police. The prime minister, Dr Hubert Minnis, said Mr Gibson had the full backing of the government.

The rhetoric hasn’t been any cooler on the other side of the argument – with union president Dwayne Woods making claims about Mr Gibson that has prompted threats of a lawsuit for defamation.

Outside Parliament, Mr Woods seemed to suggest none of his members would have done such a thing as tamper with the water supply.

“…our members, I don’t think would carry out such an act. And it definitely didn’t come from the head of this union,” said Mr Woods. We would hope not. And we would hold him to his suggestion that if anyone is found to have done so that the union would indeed seek to partner with the police and Mr Gibson to bring them to justice.

But as accusations fly, what we really need is for these boiling tempers to settle down a little.

No agreement can easily be made while people are shouting at each other and throwing all manner of accusations around. This is a time for cooler heads, if only to work out how to set aside the accusations and move on.

And whatever the disputes, they should remain within the walls of WSC.

There is no reason to take it out on the citizens trying to go about their business, washing uniforms for school or outfits for work, only to discover feuding rivals have turned off their water. Public sympathy will run out faster than those water pipes if that is ever repeated.

Transparency, please

THE Auditor General has once again told us a familiar story. Contracts issued, work not done, the public left out of pocket. This time, the contracts were issued by the National Sports Authority.

We can be outraged, of course, but who should our outrage be directed towards? Not one of the companies failing to do the work it was hired for is named in the report. Instead, we have Company A, Company B, etc.

Thanks to research by Tribune Business, we know one of those companies is Anschutz Entertainment Group, which has an ownership stake in the LA Lakers. But what of the others?

The money paid to these companies came from the public – so isn’t it right that the public should know where their money went? We ought to know who failed to deliver what was promised – otherwise there’s little to discourage it from happening again.

It is concerning the government has now adopted a level of secrecy we have not previously seen. Why?

When government starts to hide things the voters aren’t stupid. They can come to their own conclusions and act accordingly the next time they are asked for their vote.