Citizens to benefit from massive GWI upgrades – CEO

Chief Executive of Guyana Water Inc. (GWI) Dr Richard Van-West Charles has highlighted several key projects that GWI has embarked upon that are to see quality service and water provided country-wide.

Chief Executive of GWI, Dr Richard Van-West Charles

Dr Van-West Charles told Kaieteur News that since taking over as the Chief Executive in the latter months of 2015, it has been his priority to see that there is adequate and high quality water provided to Guyanese.
GWI recently benefitted through loans from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); these loans have funded the ongoing Water Sanitation project in Georgetown.
The project involves the rehabilitation of the waste water system and making the pumping stations more efficient as well as replacing some of the sewage lines. The project is also supposed to improve the quality of water provided in the capital city and help with the flooding situation that often plagues Georgetown.  As an added measure, a mass drug distribution is planned, with medication to deal with Filaria and other parasites.
“There is a planned water treatment project targeting Linden, in terms of the water treatment facilities at Wisroc and Amelia’s Ward. It is taking water from the Dakara creek, surface water that is; treating it and distributing it,” Dr Van-West Charles disclosed
He said that since coming on board with GWI in October 2015, there have been some delays, as he met “errors in the design of the treatment system.”
“These errors are in the process of being rectified. The water treatment project has been somewhat stalled due to these errors by persons contracted to design the system.
“Some of the reservoirs had some problems which have since been corrected. We are also in the process of looking at the amount of water that is being produced in relation to the demand; I think some errors were made in the calculations before the project got going and what we had to do was recommission some of the treatment plants instead of decommissioning them.
“We have had problems in Linden concerning water loss, because it is difficult to discern where the water is because of the sandy soil, it is not easy to identify these losses. We have had some dedicated teams in Linden going around trying to correct these leaks, because what happens is that the water pressure drops and the quality of the water drops, in addition to the possibility of bacteria entering the waterlines, so we have been aggressively addressing these issues.”
Residents of Diamond, Sheet Anchor and Uitvlugt can also look forward to new water treatment facilities in the future, as Dr Van-West Charles said that GWI is going to be tendering them internationally within the next few weeks. The deadline for completion of these treatment plants is October 2019.
He also stated that GWI’s analysis shows that Diamond may require two additional wells as the one at present is not adequate. He continued that GWI is now looking at those issues.
Dr Van-West Charles touched briefly on the filtration system in Georgetown stating that the one in the Shelter Belt was not functioning adequately; that the 10 filter systems were at a level of 25% efficiency.
“Our engineers are now making the corrections and we have ordered new filtration media and they are expected to be in place by the end of July, the media should be here by June, but the installation takes some time.”
“The level of filtration and water purity in Georgetown should improve significantly by August, so we are striving aggressively to ensure that the water we provide is up to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.”
GWI currently has a couple of plants that are not functioning that would be replaced by treatment facilities, proposed sites are Friendship on the East Coast of Demerara and Caledonia on the East Bank.
The issue of demand for more water supply and production should be rectified by more wells and water treatment facilities across Guyana. Dr Van-West Charles stated that these proposed facilities and wells would be constructed, once GWI is granted access to funds from a grant by the British government. Should this grant be accessed, residents of Charity in Essequibo could see water being provided via a well and treatment facility.
GWI’s boundaries did not include villages along the highway, prior to Dr Van-West Charles coming, and he stated that communities such as Silver Hill should be accessing water in the near future.
When asked about the cost for all these proposed upgrades and projects, he said that it would be some US$15 million and all projects are funded via loans.
Asked if tariffs would be raised, he replied that because of the cost of these upgrades, tariffs would have to be raised but not by much. He also said that the Public Utilities Commission would have to approve these tariffs before they are applied.