-says ‘unusual’ situation was beyond company’s control

FOR several weeks now, the water supply from the Guyana Water Incorporation (GWI) has not been up to standard and affected residents of central Georgetown have made complaints through several platforms.

On Thursday, officials from the GWI, including its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Shaik Baksh, hosted a press conference in their boardroom where they addressed this issue.

The CEO noted that it was the first time in a long time that the water quality was that poor.

He remarked that the GWI had been working assiduously to rectify this situation and restore the normal water quality to the affected communities in central Georgetown.

Baksh recalled that approximately one month ago, the entity recognised that there was a problem in their canals. He went on to explain that the company has two large canals at the Shelter Belt location which serves as storage for water coming through the Lamaha Canal from the East Demerara Water Conservancy. There are two large (western and eastern) canals in the compound.

He further explained that they recognised that the sedimentation load coming into the plant was extremely high.

“As a matter of fact, we never experienced this, such a high sedimentation load in all the years, and many of the managers who are here for 30 years have attested to this fact. So, we acted immediately,” he said.

He stated that there had been an overload of sedimentation into their system, which affected the quality of the water going out to customers in central Georgetown.

He said: “Already, we’ve seen some relief, and we have taken samples of the water on a regular basis. We have seen, through the flushing, through the cleaning of the canals and so on, that the water quality and the water colour in particular is improving. It will take a couple more days to bring it to the acceptable normalcy of the water supply.”

Noting that the existing situation was beyond the company’s control, Baksh related that it was one of those situations that occurs once in a lifetime, and on such a large scale.

It was explained that the company cleans its canals once yearly, as that was proven to be sufficient over the past few years.

“You would have the individual situations in certain areas or an individual customer for a number of reasons, including the black tanks not being cleaned. We accept that. From time to time, we do have those problems around the city. But for the totality of central Georgetown to be affected was a phenomenon. I call it a phenomenon that was never experienced, and it was beyond our control at that point in time,” the CEO expressed.

“It’s an unusual situation that occurred, and we could not work faster enough when that heavy sludge came in. When we identified it, we had to go into the East Demerara Water Conservancy, in the Lamaha Canal to ensure that that was the problem. So, that took a couple of days to verify, and when we verified it, we immediately started cleaning the canal and so on,” he told members of the media.

The CEO reminded that a treatment plant is designed with certain specifications and inputs from the surface water in terms of sedimentation, and much more.

He commended the staff of GWI for their dedication and commitment to this task and for the improvement of the water supply to its customers, including those in central Georgetown.