Water to parts of the East Bank dried up after vandals raided the Agricola pump station and Chief Executive Officer of Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) Karan Singh has issued a call for residents to help in protecting the installations.
Residents served by the Agricola pump station have been without running water since Sunday and at a press conference held at the CEO’s office in Kingston yesterday, Singh said that vandalism had been the cause of the station shutting down. He said that running water would be restored by the earliest, this Friday. The Agricola station serves McDoom, Agricola, Houston and Evans Philip Park and the CEO said that the utility would not take in water to the community because it was not budgeted for and the company could not afford it.
Singh yesterday expressed frustration at the vandalism of GWI’s assets. He said that recently a number of staff members were dismissed from the Shelter belt office for stealing cable and also fuel. He said that it seemed that they had transferred their operations to Agricola. He revealed that sometime on Sunday, the Agricola station was broken into and expensive cable worth half a million dollars was vandalized causing the shutdown of the station. He said that cable now has to be sourced and replaced.
The CEO declared that the Agricola station was one of about 100 stations that the utility could not afford security for though he pointed out that they were fenced and locked. “We cannot provide security for all of these stations”, he asserted while calling on residents to assist in monitoring them. He said that the problem of vandalism occurred too in the city and noted that a $6M pipeline laying project was recently completed and persons had removed the cast-iron covers for the valve chambers and sold it to scrap metal dealers.
Further, he noted, persons were using the manholes to dispose garbage and called on them to desist.
He also said that as a result of some residents diverting their drains “polluted water is getting into the conservancy”.
Singh said that residents have an important role to play and noted that $30M is expended on security per year by the utility. He declared that he believes that the same persons dismissed from the shelter belt location were involved in the latest theft and called on the police to act. He said that after internal investigations were completed about five persons from the Shelter Belt were fired and the matter handed over to the police.
Vergenoegen
Meanwhile, since last week Monday residents served by the Vergenoegen well, including Vergenoegen and Tuschen have been without water. GWI’s Field Manager Joseph Coddette told Stabroek News yesterday that a number of factors had contributed to the service’s disruption there and gave the assurance that running water would be restored by tomorrow.
He said that the company is doing some rehabilitation work to the well but experienced problems with the power supply.
He said that a pump was installed around last week Tuesday and Wednesday causing the disruption but then voltage fluctuations caused the motor to trip. He stated that after this the well was not “producing” and so had to be rehabilitated by “airlifting”. He explained that this meant that the well was basically being cleaned of dirt, among them iron particles that had accumulated and clogged the well. He said that this was ongoing yesterday and would take 48 hours and by the latest, on Friday water should be restored.
Residents of the Tuschen New Housing Scheme, said to be the largest housing scheme in Guyana have called for the area to have its own well. The disruption of the water for over a week has upset residents and referring to the rain that fell over the weekend, some said that only “God water” had helped to alleviate the situation. (Gaulbert Sutherland)
