In an effort to upgrade and transform the capital city of Georgetown, the Housing and Water Ministry is working to change out all of the outdated pipe systems in several prominent areas around the city. This was revealed by the Housing and Water Minister, Collin Croal during a recent episode of “The Guyana Dialogue.”
Some of the pipes slated for upgrade are those located in the vicinity of the Bank of Guyana and Umana Yana.
According to Croal, if the government was to increase the water pressure for Georgetown, those pipes would leak given their deteriorating condition.
“If you increase the pressure for Georgetown, all of those will start leaking. So, we’re changing out those old pipe systems. We’re hoping that within the next year and a half to two years, we will transform Georgetown. Those are about 200 years old pipes we’re speaking about, so they can’t really withstand the level of pressure that we will want to put,” the Minister explained.
It was previously reported in February 2020 that Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) embarked on a journey to replace the aged water network (pipes) within Georgetown. This saw numerous Georgetown residents being interrupted because of water outages caused by breakages in the old pipes.
The breakages were as a result of the aged state of the transmission lines which constitute the Georgetown network, which was installed over 100 years ago.
In 2019, GWI had the $51M replacement of the Church Street water transmission line was expected to commence in the first quarter of 2020; and, it was expected that the other replacements will follow.
The government has also been working assiduously to transform the city by upgrading old infrastructure, clearing drains, upgrading markets, expanding the road network, and more. One major project that commenced under the PPP/C administration was the restoration of the historic City Hall Building at an investment of over $1 billion.
