In September last year, residents of Diamond Housing Scheme and some surrounding communities saw water cease to flow through their taps. The service, never a full one to begin with, was completely disrupted and the Guyana Water Inc (GWI) had reported then that electric cables had been vandalized resulting in the well being unable to pump water to customers paying for the service.
A water delivery system was implemented for a while until the cables were replaced, and the residents went back to their normal lives until in February this year, when the water stopped again. Having first put the issue down to technical difficulties, the GWI later revealed that the well casing had been ruptured resulting in the clayey matter outside the well seeping in. The well, completed in October at a cost of over $55 million and funded by the Basic Needs Trust Fund, had been rendered useless and the GWI returned to its water delivery programme, sending tankers through the streets of the affected areas so that residents could have access to some water.
This was a far from ideal situation, when one considers that Diamond Housing Scheme is, to date, the largest and most highest populated in the country and has over 20 streets. In addition, many of the residents of Diamond are professionals who work either in the surrounding area or in the city. The water delivery schedule did not match the time they would be at home and had to be adjusted. However, the tankers which allowed residents to get a few buckets at a time could not substitute for turning on a tap and having potable water flow.
By March, repairs costing $12 million had been completed and the unsteady flow of water returned only to be disrupted again earlier this month. The problem was the same as in February – mud was seeping into the well. However, this time it was caught much earlier. More than likely, it was expected to recur based on what GWI’s CEO Richard Van West-Charles said at a press briefing on Monday last. Stating that the well had been temporarily fixed, he revealed that it had issues with corrosion — a problem affecting 16 other wells around the country and that it would cost hundreds of millions to fix them all.
He then admitted what the people of the communities served by the well had known all along: that the area was much too large to be properly serviced by one well and that a second one would be drilled soon. However, it is not because the community had grown too large for the service provided, the fact is that the service had always been inadequate.
While the PPP administration can be given a star for its housing policy, the actual provision of house lots has been marred by such utterly abject planning as to have it taken away again. This is not just with regard to water provision, nor does it just affect Diamond, but every single housing scheme where ordinary folk have pinched, scrimped and saved to put a roof over their heads. Consider the fact that some persons had completed building their homes at Diamond in 2006, but the well supplying the area with water was not finished until 2009. Consider too that in each ‘housing scheme’ only the main road has been paved. It is worth noting though that there are two instances where infrastructure was completed early – Pradoville1 and Pradoville2 – where the PPP elite and their cohorts purchased premium land and built houses.
Poor or no roads, a lack of electricity and inadequate water supply in Diamond, Parfait Harmonie, Golden Grove and other schemes have set new homeowners back a century. Those who went ahead and built their homes were forced to do so under extremely primitive conditions, which in the end cost them far more. There were endless complaints by beaten-down homebuilders of losing their construction materials to thieves, of trucks being unable to deliver materials purchased because of the state of the roads, of horses and cows wandering onto their lots and damaging materials and property. Those who chose to wait did so with the Sword of Damocles hanging over them in the face of threats that they would lose their lots. Sadly, this state of affairs continues to date.
Using Diamond as an example, if the huge sums of money paid for house lots—some costing $2 million—were plugged into the community’s infrastructure, it could have been today a real model housing scheme to be emulated around the country. Instead, an attempt was made to plaster gloss on its barebones infrastructure, which could in no way hold up.
In a country where it seems that foresight has been completely replaced by hindsight, one hopes that after Diamond gets its second well, attention will also be given to other long-suffering communities and not just by the GWI, but the other utility companies and the government agencies responsible for infrastructure. It’s high time they were all brought into the twenty-first century.
