THE Linden Water Facilities Improvement Project was launched in Linden last month as part of the Non-Revenue Water Project (NRW) Programme, which is a component of the Global Environment Facility GEF-CReW+ Project Guyana.

The Caribbean Regional Fund for Wastewater management+ CReW+, is a partnership project funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) that is being co-implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in 18 countries of the Wider Caribbean Region (WCR).

The project is being executed by the Secretariat of the Cartagena Convention (CAR/RCU), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, and the Organization of the American States (OAS) on behalf of UNEP and the IDB respectively.

Locally, CREW+ Projects is under the Ministry of Housing and Water, while the implementation of the components of the project is spearheaded by the Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) in collaboration with other entities including the Hydro-metrological Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The GEF CReW+ Project is geared at implementing innovative, technical, small-scale solutions in the WCR, using an Integrated Water and Wastewater Management (IWWM) approach, and building on the sustainable financing mechanisms that were piloted through the Caribbean Regional Fund for Wastewater Management, CReW Project.

CReW+ Project Guyana is being coordinated by GWI’s Sanitation Manager Rensforde Joseph, while the NRW project, Linden is headed by Jawaharlall Ramjug, Head of NRW-GWI, with support from Rawle Friday – Regional Manager for Region 10, and engineers Owen Haley and Yannick Cadogan.

The main objective of this component of the project is to improve the company’s financial efficiency and viability through the reduction of its NRW percentage at Linden by 10 percent.

To achieve this goal, several activities will be conducted over the next seven months, which include an extensive metering project; identification, removing duplicated pipelines; rehabilitation of pipe network fixtures in specific areas; extensive filed exercise geared at detecting and repairing leaking potable water lines, and conducting a hydraulics analysis to optimise water distribution.