Guyana has com­mis­sioned a GUY$1.35 bil­lion (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) wa­ter treat­ment plant that the au­thor­i­ties say will sig­nif­i­cant­ly trans­form the lives of 16,000 res­i­dents along the West Coast of De­mer­ara through ac­cess to treat­ed wa­ter.

The treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty in Wales, is one of three planned for Re­gion Three un­der the gov­ern­ment’s Coastal Wa­ter Treat­ment In­fra­struc­ture Pro­gramme (CWTIP).

It was con­struct­ed by Hipro Eco­logi­cos, with lo­cal part­ners S Jag­mo­han Con­struc­tion and is de­signed to treat eight mil­lion litres of wa­ter per day (MLD) sup­port­ed by three wells.

It is suf­fi­cient to meet the de­mands of the pop­u­la­tion with com­mu­ni­ties like Bell West, Goed In­tent, Sis­ters, Paten­tia, Vries­land, Vive la Force and Free and Easy ben­e­fit­ing from the ini­tia­tive.

The plant in­cor­po­rates ad­vanced tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems to en­sure high stan­dards of wa­ter qual­i­ty, while sen­sors have been em­ployed to mon­i­tor pres­sure, flow, and tur­bid­i­ty, pro­vid­ing pre­cise re­al-time da­ta.

Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali, who spoke at the com­mis­sion of the plant on Sun­day, said this de­vel­op­ment re­flects the gov­ern­ment’s vi­sion of hope, dig­ni­ty, and progress com­pared to the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s track record of bro­ken promis­es, lack of vi­sion and eco­nom­ic hard­ships.

He said with this sin­gle in­vest­ment, the gov­ern­ment is in­vest­ing GUY$400,000 per house­hold.

“This is a sto­ry of vi­sion ver­sus lack there­of. This is a sto­ry of re­spect ver­sus cal­lous­ness.  This is a sto­ry of the Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty/Civic forces.  The rest, and I say the rest be­cause many of them are cap­tured in the um­brel­la of in­dig­ni­ty.”

Ali spoke of the gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts in hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, with over 1,000 homes built or be­ing built in the re­gion, cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,000 in­di­vid­u­als. He said his ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­so in­vest­ed near­ly GUY$90 bil­lion in hous­ing with­in Re­gion Three and urged res­i­dents to recog­nise the im­prove­ments be­ing made.

Hous­ing and Wa­ter Min­is­ter, Collin Croal, said that ac­cess to clean, treat­ed wa­ter is a uni­ver­sal right that has guid­ed the gov­ern­ment’s bold in­vest­ments to mod­ernise and ex­pand the wa­ter sec­tor.

“For far too long com­mu­ni­ties have faced the chal­lenge of ac­cess­ing safe, re­li­able wa­ter,”  he said, adding that “we have worked un­ceas­ing­ly to cor­rect years of ne­glect and to bring re­al change to our peo­ple”.

Gov­ern­ment said that over the past four and a half years, Re­gion Three has ben­e­fit­ted from sub­stan­tial in­vest­ments in the wa­ter sec­tor, amount­ing to GUY$7.6 bil­lion, ben­e­fit­ting an es­ti­mat­ed  89,000 peo­ple.

In ad­di­tion, a to­tal of 35 coastal wells have been drilled, with nine of those lo­cat­ed in Re­gion Three.

Guyana Wa­ter Inc (GWI) chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Shaik Baksh, said that the Wales Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant’s de­sign is scal­able, al­low­ing for fu­ture ex­pan­sions to ac­com­mo­date a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion and that the plant has achieved an im­pres­sive 0.1 mg per litre of iron con­tent, sur­pass­ing the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s (WHO) stan­dard of 0.3 mg per litre.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Mar 17, CMC –  

CMC/gt/ir/2025