GWI to commence conservation campaign

Jan 27, 2009 News

– hopes to target school children

The Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) is poised to increase awareness on the subject of water conservation, a feature which must first start at the school level, according to Public Relations Officer of the entity, Rawle Aaron.

GWI PRO, Rawle Aaron

Aaron informed that the water company will be engaging a campaign to promote the notion of conservation through educational messages, so that persons can understand that while Guyana may be a land of many waters, consumable waters must be conserved.
“We have a lot of water, but what some people do not know is that less than one-third of the world’s water is consumable, and that amount is depleting all the time,” Aaron highlighted.
For this reason, he noted, customers will be encouraged this year to take a more active role in water conservation.
According to the GWI official, it is anticipated that persons will be “re-cultured through a psychological re-indoctrination process” which will begin at the level of the country’s schools.
“It has to start from our schools. We have to create a culture from the nursery school stage. Our education programme will be specifically directed to psychologically redesigning our people’s thinking about how they use water.”
The platform for the school programme, according to Aaron, will be rolled out at the Children’s Costume Competition this year, and will be fully implemented countrywide shortly after.
He disclosed that GWI will be participating in the competition in a massive way, whereby its involvement with the schools will see students actually developing their own costumes using various water themes.
“We are not just going to build a costume and give them; they will have to research on the various aspects of water, for example, water conservation — how they can conserve water; the abuse of water; various methods that are being used to lay pipelines, among others.”
On a daily basis, the importance of conserving water is emphasised, Aaron noted, even as he pointed out that oftentimes customers believe that they can use water at will, simply because of the fact that they are paying for the commodity.
But, according to Aaron, “The payment for the water is not as important as the source from which it comes.”
He explained that most of Guyana’s consumable water comes from wells, thus the local aquifer is being depleted.
He added that the water in the aquifer, which is hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface, is being depleted at a faster rate than it is being restored.
“If we dig a well, and that well has a 50-year potential and we use that well in an irrational way, then its life cycle could be reduced by half instead.”
However, if water is utilised in a conservative manner, Aaron noted, the life of the aquifer will undoubtedly be extended.
He pointed out that according to the United Nations standard, water is wasted if each member of a family utilizes more than 30 gallons of water per day.
And should a few families opt to waste water, Aaron disclosed, other customers on the water distribution network will be affected, in that the water pressure reaching them will be close to nothing.
According to him, such is the case, since no known water distribution system in the world is designed to have all customers use water at the same time.
“Customer must come to the understanding that, when they do not need water, they must turn off their taps…It is imperative that customers at the front of the network reduce their water consumption to allow others at the back to get water, too,” Aaron insisted.