Friday, October 9, 2026
The drought is draining the Corporate Area’s reservoirs. The Mona Reservoir is at 32.9 per cent of capacity and the Hermitage Dam at 39.3 per cent, against more than 60 per cent at Mona and a full Hermitage this time last year. Some 107 of the National Water Commission’s 405 systems are in drought conditions, and parts of Kingston and St Andrew are moving from daily supply to an alternating schedule.
Into the gap roll the water trucks. At the Public Accounts Committee, MPs said some operators draw from springs and other unverifiable sources, sell irrigation water for domestic use, or fill up at taxpayer-funded standpipes and resell to NWC customers at significant prices. The NWC regulates only the trucks it contracts, which must be inspected and sterilised, and it cannot set prices for the rest. So when the taps run dry and the drum is full, who checks what is in it?
In a parched Kingston yard under an orange sky, a flustered man in a suit tumbles backwards over a rolling blue drum marked “TRUCKED WATER”, still clutching a notice that reads “ALTERNATE DAYS”. Behind him a battered tanker tops up a household tank beside a cracked reservoir whose sign reads “MONA 32.9% FULL”, while a family waits with empty buckets above a caption strip that says simply “SOURCE: UNKNOWN”.
Read more: Drought Puts Jamaica’s Trucked Water Trade Under Scrutiny
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