Residents of the Hand En Veldt community in Mahaica, Region 5, have been promised access to potable water by Christmas this year, after 10 years of being without such.
This promise was made as Managing Director of Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) Dr. Richard Van West-Charles and other technical staff visited the community on Monday to meet with the residents.
The residents of the community had written a letter to the editor, which was published in the Tuesday, November 21, 2017 edition of the Kaieteur news, complaining of their lack of access to potable water even after making several pleas to the previous administration.
However, under the current administration, the residents recently reached out to GWI’s regional office where they received support and works commenced shortly thereafter to ensure that the residents receive access to potable water.
There were, however, some technical challenges along the way, which delayed the installation of the service connections to customers. The GWI Managing Director explained to the residents that he asked that the company’s technical staff examine the situation, and despite the challenges, GWI will seek every means possible to remedy the situation by Christmas.
Dr. Van West-Charles took the opportunity to encourage the residents to firstly register with the regional office as customers, following which they will pay a minimal service connection fee.
He also related to residents that the company will regularly test the water they will receive and the results will be accessible for all to view.
Meanwhile, GWI Executive Director of Operations, Mr. Dwayne Shako, told the residents that the company will commence the installation of service connections to customers during this week.
Residents also took the opportunity to raise other issues, including leakages in the vicinity of the community and the build-up of rust in the pipe at the end of the network.
GWI will install a flush-out mechanism to address the latter issue, while the company will look into having the other issues resolved.