Public health officials confirm water truck in video belongs to funeral home

THE WESTMORELAND Public Health Services (WPHS) has revealed that an investigation into an unmarked water truck seen in a viral video extracting water from the Roaring River in the parish belongs to Honeyghan Funeral Home and was pulling water for its own purposes.

In the 16-second video, which shows a parked water truck being filled, a voice is heard saying, “The people them buying water dung a Westmoreland, look where you buying water from, river, Roaring River.”

However, Steve Morris, chief public health inspector with the Westmoreland Health Services, said: “Our investigations have found that the truck in the video belongs to Honeyghan Funeral Home. We are aware that they use water from the Roaring River for the washing of their vehicles and to water their plants on their property.”

Morris also said that Honeyghan’s vehicles are not among those certified to truck potable water.

Truck Never used for potable water

In the meantime, Melvin Honeyghan, managing director for Honeyghan Funeral Services, stated categorically that his company’s truck has never been used to transport potable water.

“It is our truck (that was seen in the video). We use the water on our property to wash our vehicles. It has not been used as potable water,” said Honeyghan.

“Our truck has never been advertised as a truck for potable water. It has only been used for domestic purposes at the funeral home,” he explained.

“The people who produced the video obviously did not know the purpose for which we were pulling water from the river. This is a regular activity for us to pull water from the river on a weekly basis,” Honeyghan lamented.

Head of the Negril business community, Elaine Allen-Bradley, has expressed concern about the quality of the water being sold across the parish, especially as it relates to allegations of people selling untreated water.

“It is real. They are doing it, but we don’t know if it is being sold as potable water,” Allen-Bradley said when contacted for a response.

She said the ongoing water crisis has reached a point of frustration and that she is now hoping that there will not be an outbreak of some type of water-borne disease,

Allen-Bradley argued that people are thirsty for water and they are not considering that they need to boil the water bought from trucks before drinking.

“If you want water and somebody comes to sell you some, with or without a certificate from these truckers, you are going to take it because you need it,” she said.

Morris said that while there are allegations of truckers operating below the radar, the WPHS is working tirelessly to have everyone involved in the business trained and certified under a programme started more than a year ago.

Within another two weeks, Morris said 21 trucks and drivers would have been certified under an annual programme being carried out by the health department.

“We sanitised 16 last week and are doing another five today [Wednesday]. The results from the lab take two weeks, but they get a receipt to operate in the meantime,” the public health inspector said while referencing the trucks that are certified to sell potable water.