By Kimone Witter
The Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) has declared that water is becoming an economic risk that demands a national, measurable and financed response.
It is calling for the government to urgently commission, or consolidate where appropriate, an independent national water-resource and demand assessment.
This survey will establish Jamaica’s current and projected water needs under different climate and development scenarios, and assess whether the existing pipeline of projects is sufficient.
The PSOJ says it acknowledges the initiatives that the government is undertaking for greater storage, network rehabilitation, system interconnection and additional treatment capacity.
But, PSOJ Executive Director Sacha Vasccianna-Riley says an important question to be answered is whether the combined scale, financing and delivery timelines of these investments are sufficient to meet the country’s future water needs, or whether the country is merely managing each drought as a crisis while the underlying supply and resilience gap remains.
“The PSOJ is calling for an urgent national reset in how we plan for and manage water. We need to move from repeatedly responding to drought to actually building long-term water security. And for us, the point is really simple. Jamaica cannot keep spending on drought response without investing at the same time in infrastructure and systems needed to prevent the next drought from becoming another economic crisis,” she suggested.
“We have been through this cycle before – drought restrictions, trucking, recovery, and then the cycle simply repeats every year. And this is not something we can treat as an unexpected emergency. For us, water is economic infrastructure. So agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, construction and virtually every productive sector depends on reliable water,” reasoned the executive director.
The PSOJ said it notes that the government has estimated its national drought response, including substantial expenditure on water trucking, could reach approximately $500 million if dry conditions persist.