Director of Projects at the Guyana Water Inc. (GWI) Marlon Daniels has said that within the next two to three years, new water distribution lines would be installed across the entire City, replacing the ones that were installed as way back as the 1930s.
That process has commenced.
He spoke to the News Room about the Georgetown Transmission and Distribution Replacement Project on Thursday at his GWI office on Vlissengen Road, Georgetown.
“The programme is meant to replace the eight transmission systems across the city. Every year, government makes more than enough resources available for this project. I gather within the next two or three years we will have the entire city with new lines that are robust and not susceptible to the bursting that occurs,” he shared.
The very old infrastructure that is in place currently is made of cast iron, as in those days, PVC was not a popular material. “You have a lot of corrosion occurring in the city, so every now and then you will see breakage happening at specific places. Right now, the hub or the hot spot is at the Parliament Building juncture. That line is aged. It is time to be decommissioned.”
As such, GWI is starting a project on Thursday night outside of Parliament Building to replace the transmission and distributions lines from Broad to Hadfield Streets and from Hadfield Street to Bank of Guyana.
Coupled with the transmission system replacement, Daniels explained that they also have distribution systems which feed residents directly. “So the transmission systems move the water from plant to plant; it moves bulk water at high pressure around the entire city and then those go into the distribution systems which then connect to the residents. Those also are aged and are giving us some problems,” he explained.
Over the last three years since the replacement project started, Daniels said that the government has made available just about 1 ½ billion dollars each year to focus on works in the city, so that all of the lines can eventually be replaced.
