GWI says addressing West Bank Demerara water woes
Measures are being put in place to address the shortage of water in communities on the West Bank of Demerara.
The Guyana Water Inc (GWI) yesterday said that they are embarking on a potable water distribution system to meet the needs of affected residents.
Over the last three weeks, the communities have been experiencing a low supply of water due to issues with two of the three wells being operated.
GWI’s Executive Director of Operations, Dwayne Shako yesterday said that within the last three weeks,
they have experienced a severe drop in production from the wells.
“Within the last three weeks we have experienced a severe drop in production in one of the wells and by the time we attempted to do some work on that, we experienced another drop in a next well. 39,000 gallons were lost in an hour and within hours 40,000 gallons in Westminster. We were losing significant amount of water in that area,” Shako said yesterday.
The affected wells are located in L’Oratoire and Westminster. According to Shako, they have been able to rectify the issues at the well in L’Oratoire and have commenced work on the Westminster well.
“We got [the L’Oratoire well] working around 4 am and restored service to the area. We are working on the second well around the clock, 24 hours, to get that back in operation as fast as we can bring and restore service by Saturday,” GWI’s Director of Operations disclosed.
He further stated that the issues with the wells were not foreseen and added to the fact that the residential area has no additional wells, customers were affected.
Against this background, he explained that GWI has recently concluded drilling of a fourth well and should commence drilling of a fifth well by the end of the year at Schoonard. The new well he stated, is currently in its developmental phase and would become operational shortly. These additional wells, Shako explained, will assist in meeting the high demand for water in the affected communities.
Denise Woolford, Region Three’s Regional Manager of GWI yesterday said that they have commenced water distribution to residents of Recht-door-Zee and Onderneeming.
“We have commenced trucking potable water to the affected areas starting from 5pm today [yesterday] and [we’re] working around the clock .This trucking [of water will] continue until Westminster and the network returns to normalcy,” she said,
She explained that for yesterday and the days ahead, trucks distributing water will work between 6am and 10 pm, providing an opportunity for those who are working and are not home during the day to access water at a time convenient to them.
“We will be going to house to house. We will try our best to ensure we have enough water for customers. But we are asking that customers must be considerate,” Shako said while noting that there is no restriction to the amount of water that can be collected. He stated that in cases of small streets, the tankers would pump water to homes from the main road to avoid damaging the streets.
“We understand the burden and situation of no water at Recht-door-Zee and Onderneeming. We are working as hard as we can to get these issues solved. These wells are very deep, around 600 feet, to get to them and that takes a lot of time and effort… By 10 am Saturday we should be able to fix the Westminster pump,” Shako assured.