Ministry of Housing and Water: Year in Review…
-pilfering comes a close second
ONE OF the major challenges faced by the Ministry of Housing and Water during the year 2009, and which has seen only a slight improvement over 2008 was revenue collection for water supplied by the Guyana Water Inc.
This has prompted Minister of Housing and Water, Irfan Ali to call on the consuming public to make every effort to pay up their water bills. Addressing an end-of-year press conference at his Brickdam offices, which dealt with the accomplishments as well as the challenges of the Ministry in 2009, Minister Ali declared: “There is a large percentage of private consumers who are not paying their bills. We still need to let the people understand that paying for water is a priority in terms of their expenditure plans.”

Commenting on the company’s internal system of revenue collection, the Minister said that this too continues to be an area of grave concern. “That is, getting our people to understand the importance of paying for the water and the importance of conservation.”

In 2008, GWI only managed to collect approximately 50 per cent of the total billing sent out, and in 2009 increased that amount to approximately 65 % of the total billing.

Noting that more water is treated and produced by the GWI than is actually required per person per day, according to international standards, Minister Ali said that a lot of the revenue collected as water rates comes from government agencies and institutions, and that it is unsustainable for the GWI to continue operating in this manner.
Scrap-iron theft
Another major bugbear to the sector, Ali said, was the vandalizing and theft of important assets made of metal for resale to scrap iron dealers. “They have been stealing important assets and converting them to their own use and profiteering… and we intend to have the regulations enforced in 2010 so that we can have some of these persons brought to justice,” the Minister said.

Other misdemeanors pointed to, and on which the Ministry will get tough in the new year included the misuse and abuse of the system by restaurants which fail to implement grease traps; and the abuse of the system by the citizenry in the dumping of garbage in manholes.
Water treatment challenge
Seeing the provision of treated water as another major challenge facing the sector, Minister Ali said: “We are also at a stage within the water sector, whereby we have to make an assessment of the level aquifers as planned. Such an assessment would give the Ministry vital data in understanding what level of ground resource is available.”

This in turn, he said, would determine whether GWI has to move towards treated surface water, or converting surface water now being dumped into the Demerara River from the Conservancy, into potable water for human consumption.

In an effort to swiftly address this situation, he said that come 2010, his Ministry will be focusing a lot more on education in the use and conservation of water. In this regard, negotiations have commenced with the Ministry of Agriculture to have water conservation techniques incorporated in the schools’ curriculum at the Primary Level as part of the GWI’s work in the newyear.
Good news
The foregoing setbacks notwithstanding, the Minister said there was some element of good news, in that the water sector has definitely seen improvements, whereby targets set have been accomplished, and considerable sums of monies have been expended towards improving the efficiency of the sector during 2009.

He announced that for the period under review, the Ministry of Housing and Water would have invested more than $4.2 billion in the water sector, in terms of the overall target of the turnaround plan, adding: “We are approximately 70 per cent there.”

And in terms of increased water treatment capacity, the Minister said GWI saw the construction of five treatment plants, which would see the output of 34 mega litres of water per day, with an investment of more than $1.5 billion.

In terms of expanding our water services – that is, installing of new infrastructure to deliver more flow to the people, the Ministry has commenced its strategy in drilling ten new bore holes and in 2009, spent in excess of $500M. This places it, at the end of the fiscal year, to have seen at least 75 per cent of the turn around plan target being met in terms of these bore holes.
Sewerage System
Minister Ali announced that some 90 per cent of the target set by the Ministry of Housing and Water, for the improvement of the sewerage system in Georgetown for the year 2009, was accomplished.

A breakdown of the target set is as follows: The rehabilitation of the TucVille Receiving Station; procurement of new sewer pumps; procurement of materials for street sewer rehabilitation and the rehabilitation of 24 sewer pump stations.

And even with hiccups experienced in the first quarter of 2009, with a contractor failing to deliver on a contract for the supply of sewer pumps, this problem was eventually resolved. A new contractor was hired, employing international tendering process As a result, the first six of 25 sewer pumps were received last Friday and should be installed within a few days. The remaining 19 are expected by mid January and are slated for installation within the February 2010 deadline.

“In terms of non-revenue water, we have completed the distribution and transmission network rehabilitation of approximately 100 kilometres of new pipeline in the network in 2009 at an estimated cost of $1.4 Billion,” he said. The estimated cost of rehabilitation of the sewerage system was approximately $502 M and the water metering – $315M
Meter coverage
The Ministry has met and surpassed by more than 30%, its target to install approximately 16,000 meters. Some 20,000 water meters in were installed in 2009. This represents metering of approximately 40 per cent of the total consumer base of the GWI, as well as accomplishments of almost 80 per cent of the turn around plan.
The turn around plan had established a benchmark of metering at least 50 per cent of GWI’s c
ustomers by the end of 2010. To date they are a mere 10% away from that target.
Water Billing
And on the matter of inaccurate billing, raised by consumers, Minister Ali admitted that it was one of the challenges to be addressed. “We want to acknowledge that we have had difficulties with the billing. We are not going to shy away from this,” he said, adding that GWI has had difficulties with the billing system, but is at present auditing the system; with a view to ensuring bills are accurate.
Governance
The Ministry has reviewed its internal control in the various functional areas of GWI, and has bolstered the anti-fraud and corruption policy which was launched and rolled out throughout the organisation. Several workshops have been held with various stakeholders, as well as staff, the Minister said.