Recent claims by the Leader of the Opposition, Azruddin Mohamed, regarding access to electricity and water in the community of Swan are false, misleading, and another unfortunate example of political rhetoric being presented as fact, then repeated wholesale by sections of the media without basic verification.
What makes this particularly troubling is that the evidence contradicting this narrative is contained in the very reporting being used to advance it. Residents quoted in an online pseudo-journalism entity specifically spoke about households being “disconnected”, the difficulties being experienced by families currently without electricity and the need for assistance with “restoring electricity services”. Obvious questions, therefore, arise: How can residents be disconnected from an electricity service that supposedly does not exist, and how can they seek restoration of a service to which the community supposedly never had access?
The facts are straightforward. The community of Swan along the Soesdyke/Linden Highway has access to the national electricity grid, and residents are able to access formal electricity services. For households that were not yet ready to transition to the formal grid, solar panels were provided to ensure that they continued to have access to electricity.
The situation with water is similar. Swan has access to a formal water supply system. Individual households may experience issues with connection, service, payment or other circumstances that affect their access at a particular time, but that cannot honestly be transformed into a claim that the community has no access to water.
The Opposition leader has manipulated and repackaged the information to create the false impression that basic infrastructure has not been extended to Swan. This episode is increasingly indicative of the approach being taken by the leader of the Opposition and, regrettably, certain sections of the media, where a claim is made, a political narrative is constructed around it and it is then repeated and amplified with little attempt at verification, even when the evidence contradicting the narrative is sitting in plain sight.
The Government will continue working closely with the residents of Swan to support their formal connection to electricity and water services, and much of this work is already advancing, with ongoing efforts to bring more households fully onto these established systems.