THE Ministry of Housing & Water holds responsibility for the Central Housing & Planning Authority and the Guyana Water Inc. The ministry’s mission is addressed through Policy Development and Administration, Housing Development and Water Service Expansion and Management.
Tasked with the senior ministerial portfolio for this ministry, Minister Collin Croal is obviously in his element, even as he executes his onerous official duties as mandated by his ministerial portfolio as he travels throughout the country on outreaches that are informing him of the needs and concerns that are direct responsibilities of his ministry.

PPP/C Member of Parliament Allister Charlie posted: “The Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) is advancing works to provide improved water access to hundreds of Amerindians at Shulinab village in South-Central Rupununi.”
Then back to the coast, as a notice by the ministry informed: “East Coast Residents, [the]Ministry of Housing and Water will be at Annandale tomorrow at 1pm, November 10th, 2020.”

This aggressive thrust in enhancing service provision of essential utilities is merely a continuum of the PPP/C’s commitment, under the watch of successive PPP/C ministers, to create synergies for enhanced lifestyles of every Guyanese.
At the commissioning of the $450M Lima Water Treatment Plant under a Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo presidency, the designated World Bank representative said that Guyana was meeting targets for pure-water supply countrywide
In an opening delivery at the official commissioning ceremony, then Chief Executive of Guyana Water Inc. (GWI), Mr. Nigel Niles, in introducing members of the head table, made a Freudian slip by introducing President Jagdeo as “His Excellency, Dr. Cheddi…,” which elicited loud, appreciative and prolonged applause.

The Lima Water Treatment Plant provided over 3,000 residents of neighbouring communities with clean, safe water.
Mr. Paul Dowlin, Operations Analyst at the local World Bank Office, while addressing the gathering reflected that the dearth of clean, safe water has resulted in the death of millions worldwide. He lauded the Government of Guyana and GWI for providing over 17,000 residents of the Essequibo with clean, potable water.

Dowlin stated that Guyana is meeting its targets of availing its citizens of adequate pure-water supply throughout the country. He noted that 94 percent of Guyana’s population had access to an improved drinking-water source – 98 percent in urban areas, and 91 percent in rural areas.

Then subject Minister Irfaan Ali professed that the government’s promise to all Guyanese of a brighter future through strategies that will adopt a pro-poor approach to growth and economic development that are projected to eventuate in expanded social infrastructure to achieve the bridging of a development gap all across Guyana, with the equitable distribution of resources to the Guyanese people, is fructifying.
He affirmed that on the coastland in Region Two, 95 percent of the population had access to potable water, with the remaining five percent slated to receive potable water within a two-month period when the Good Hope well was commissioned.
Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo recalled days of yore when fetching water for long distances was a daily chore and stressed that the party to which he belongs subscribes to the philosophy of empowering citizens with the necessary tools for wealth-creation. The then Head-of-State asserted that there was yet much more to accomplish and cited as an example a US$12M water-facilitation project in Linden, Region 10.
Then, catastrophically, subsequent to the elections of 2015, Guyana’s development paradigm took a drastic reversal and the growth trajectory took a steep downward propulsion.

This retrogression in development of the social capital was reflected in multiple ways, to the point where utility dysfunction became a norm and the housing drive came to an abrupt halt.
The significant investment by the government in the emergency budget, which certainly will be boosted in the 2021 budget under the watch of Guyana’s brilliant Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh, has fructified in a multi-sectoral development drive that has already started to transform the lives of Guyanese countrywide.

Access to potable water is among the essential contributors to the industrial and related growth that leads to social development: the development of the processing industries is an example, whereby socio-economic development is largely dependent on a reliable supply of safe water which, in turn, leads to persons living longer and healthier lives.

Minister Croal’s enthusiastic and energetic approach to fulfilling his primary ministerial mandate is laudatory and adjunctive to the overarching goals of social development and economic growth of the Irfaan Ali-led administration.