Water, or rather the provision of water which is of a consumable quality without producing deleterious effects, has become a million-dollar business in this country. Outlets, where persons can fill their reusable 5-gallon bottles at $200 or $300 each, can be found all over Georgetown as well as in some rural areas. Delivery trucks service those who cannot or prefer not to visit the outlets. Water coolers and dispensers are good sellers and stores must constantly restock them.
The water business is everywhere. Previously persons travelling in cars and buses had to wait until they got to their destinations or had to find a convenient shop or supermarket to get bottled water on the go. This is no longer necessary; water vendors have become ubiquitous around the city. Many of them are women and children who have their water carts parked at a corner while they weave in and out of traffic with cold bottles which they sell at $100 each.
The obvious danger aside, considering the many maniacs behind the wheels of vehicles, there is now an additional source of littering and pollution. The odds are very high that many of the persons patronizing water sellers will simply toss the empty bottles out of their vehicles after they have consumed the water. A look around Georgetown provides evidence of this fact.
The saying, which has been adopted as the Guyana Water Incorporated’s motto, is trite but true: water is life. The human body is 50% to 65% water and humans need water to live – for growing crops, for sanitation and for clean, potable water to drink. Unfortunately, water resources worldwide are limited and some are compromised. Studies have found that at least three billion people worldwide only have access to water of dubious quality. According to the World Health Organisation, 80 million people in this region – Latin America and the Caribbean – still lack access to clean potable water.
Under the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7 – Ensure Environmental Sustainability – target 10 requires nations to: halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking-water and sanitation.
For the most part, there has been significant effort made in this regard. So much so that in 2012 the United Nations announced that MDG 7 Target 10 had been met ahead of its 2015 schedule. However, persons on the ground conducting studies of water quality, feel the declaration was premature. While water provision might have improved exponentially, water quality remained dubious, still giving rise to the spread of a number of water-borne diseases when used from source. Source here refers not to rivers, creeks and rainwater captured in tanks, but the so-called treated water that flows from the taps.
In Guyana, we are poignantly aware of this. It could be said without fear of contradiction that every citizen has been affected by a water-borne disease, either directly, having had a relative or family member fall ill or die, or knowing someone who has. Hence the ‘water industry’, which came into being more than 15 years ago, is still growing with new entrepreneurs still investing in providing drinking water with the expectation of making healthy profits. More than likely they will because despite the protestations to the contrary by the GWI, Guyana’s tap water is of dubious quality. The sanitation project currently underway to replace underground pipes – the deterioration of which had long raised the issue of cross contamination – is decades late and still has some way to go.
There are no springs and geysers from which local bottled water is produced although the very large companies have their own wells. Those apart, what is sold to the public is the tap water of dubious quality that is triple-filtered, distilled and otherwise purified. Guyanese must trust that water providers are not cutting corners and that the Guyana National Bureau of Standards is keeping a keen eye on this industry.