Donald E. de Castro. Photo: VINO/File

And it always amuses me that so many people do not really understand what the real issue is.

Here is a question.

If a family has a family meeting and one of the children makes a proposal or suggestion and everyone supports it: who is responsible for the success or failure?

Ever since the days of Ocean Conversion, people have been complaining about the supply of water and for whatever reason, some thought that by not only another supply—and that it should be foreign owned, as their belief foreigners can always do better than locals.

I will not spend any time in all the details surrounding Bi-Water coming here, except to say that they should have never been brought here.

The water supply to the consumer has not improved and some may say, has gotten worse.

This is where one needs to understand the difference between 'Production and Distribution.'

Bi-Water 

As far as I can recal,l Ocean Conversion was always producing the water and that Bi- Water, is also producing the required amount of water.

That was their contract with the government (to produce water) and from all my conversation and research they never failed in producing water.

The question is; who is responsible for distribution?

We all know the answer to that question. Government is the entity responsible for distribution and until this is responsibly handled, the situation will not improve.

Let us look at distribution from a private angle.

If Company ‘A’ was the distributor for product ‘XYT’ here in the Virgin Islands (VI) and customers complain about the service from company ‘A’ and later on Company 'B' contacts the producer of ‘XYT’ and they are able to convince the company that they can do a much better job in distribution, they will take away the distributorship from ‘A’ and give it to ‘B.’

During this process production may decrease, as sales have dropped because of poor distribution by Company 'A.'

Many people like to place the blame for the water woes on (Honourable) Julian Fraser, RA (R3). Now revisit the question of the family meeting.

So, if the proposal that the child made turned out to be detrimental to the family, are you going to blame the child? 

While (Hon) Julian was responsible for wanting to bring in Bi-Water (for whatever dumb reason) it could not happen without the approval of the Cabinet.