RESIDENTS of several areas in Georgetown were without water for several hours from Thursday night after a main pipeline broke along Cemetery Road.

The areas, which include Turkeyen, Cummings Lodge, Festival City in North Ruimveldt, Kingston and Sophia, were affected by the water shortage.

According to Guyana Water Inc (GWI) technicians, an old, 14-inch main pipeline was damaged and this was cited as the main reason behind the problem.
The breakage at Cemetery Road has been recorded as the fourth breakage in the past seven years due to pipelines that were built in the late 1900s.

According to Director of Operations at GWI, Dwayne Shako, many of the pipelines installed at Cemetery Road are approximately 117 years old.
“What cause this is that it’s a really old network,” he explained.
Several complaints were made by Georgetown residents who were greatly affected by the disruption.

“It came as a surprise for me; I arrive at work late because I had to travel two corners from where I live to get some water from a friend, who, at the time, fortunately, had a full tank of water,” Christel Cummings, a resident from Tucville stated.
The breakage of the main pipeline occurred over a large canal, making the task for the GWI workers difficult to fix. In tackling the issue, two revetments were built to stop the water on both sides of the canal.

After that, works were then carried out on the main problem which took approximately eight hours before the actual issue was dealt with.

“It took us nine truck-load of mud to build the revetment so that works could have been carried out. Also, we had to be careful in terms of the safety aspects, because workers were close by where the cutting of the pipe was done,” Shako explained.
Looking ahead, new strategies have been implemented by the GWI as the entity looks to upgrade the water distribution network, which involves the replacement of the century-old pipeline to stop water outages from recurring.

“We have recently gotten the supplementary provision in which we are going to be replacing lines in Vlissengen Road and Church Street,” Managing Director of the GWI, Dr Richard Van-West Charles stated.

Works to upgrade pipelines have already taken place in Albouystown and will be completed in other locations in Georgetown.

According to Van-West Charles, by 2022, pipeline breakages will be a thing of the past, because by that time the new water distribution infrastructure will be completed.