THOUGH Guyana boasts an abundance of fresh water, the Government of Guyana is crafting a strategic programme aimed at enhancing the country’s water management, ensuring the availability of safe and sufficient water supply countrywide.

The country’s Head of State, President, Dr Irfaan Ali, while commissioning a new water-treatment plant on Sunday, disclosed that the Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) –the country’s premier water utility company will transition to a national water management entity, with a new and expanded mandate.

“That is why the Guyana Water Inc as you know it now, in the coming years, will change rapidly and will become a national water- management entity that will not only look at the management of water through wells or residential use, but at other use,” the President said.

Heavily focused on conservation, water sources such as reservoirs will be examined, ensuring that the natural resource will be managed in a sustainable way.

“So, the Integrated Water Resource Management Programme, which will deal with conservation, reservoirs, integration, a study of our aquifers, all of that we are transitioning into in our national water- management entity.”

GWI’s new mandate would see a greater use of fresh water into the water-management system.

HOPE-LIKE CANALS
President Ali further disclosed that soon, the works would commence on a water-treatment facility at one of the Hope Canals on the East Coast of Demerara.

This facility, which has Guyana’s largest sluice, aids in directing excess water towards the Atlantic Ocean. The massive drainage and irrigation infrastructure located in Region Four was commissioned back in 2014, and has eight doors that function as a drainage sluice.

The government is currently in the process of constructing similar canals in other regions.

In a recent interview with this newspaper, the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) Chairman, Lionel Wordsworth, disclosed that tenders would soon be out for the construction of the canals.

Instead of dumping the fresh water, the government is building Hope-like canals in Regions Three, Five and Six.

He explained that at Hope, the conversancy stores high levels of water and also aids draining off excess water from rainfall and high tides that may affect farmlands and residential areas across several communities along the coast.

Ultimately, the President’s vision is to harness the water being conserved in canals such as Hope, adding treatment facilities to the existing infrastructure and converting it.

“Wherever we are dumping fresh water, we are dumping expensive assets, and we have to convert that asset into value,” the president explained on Sunday.

In 2024, the Government of Guyana allocated $26 billion for the construction of large-scale drainage and irrigation canals, aimed at strengthening the country’s capacity to manage water resources and respond to climate change.

The funding for these extensive projects will come from the sale of carbon credits to the American oil firm Hess Corporation. This initiative is part of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), under which 85 per cent of proceeds from the sale of carbon credits are designated for climate adaptation and environmental-protection projects.