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Collapsing city’s sewage system could lead to public health issues

Jun 03, 2009 News

Sewage could create breeding places for vectors and vermin – Royston King

The situation of the capital city’s failing sewage system could lead to all kinds of public health challenges and attention is needed to rectify this urgently says city Public Relations officer Royston King.

In an invited comment King, noting the realities, said that the municipality hopes that the authorities will treat with this issue as soon as the sewage potentially could create breeding places for mosquitoes with rippling effects on the citizenry.

While he could not say what is being done by his municipality to treat this potential environmental and public health disaster, he did say that the City’s Public Health Department is in contact with GWI.

King noted that the city’s vector control department is not engaged in fogging of areas for mosquitoes but is treating the problem at the larva stage. “Our vector control workers are in local communities spraying breathing and potential breathing places for mosquitoes.”

These locations include Charlestown, Albouystown and parts of Lacytown and Cummingsburg.

When the city sewerage was constructed it was intended to be utilised by a mere 20,000 households. Today, aside from being aged the failure of the city’s sewage system has been linked to the overpopulation of the city that has dramatically outgrown the capacity of the sewerage.

More than $300 M is slated to be expended this year to restore the Capital city’s Sewage system integrity.

However this development may be delayed to some extent as Minister of Housing and Water, Irfaan Ali, has had cause to terminate a contract, which should have already seen a supplier providing the Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) with submersible pumps for this purpose.

The GWI earlier this year inked a US$422,560 contract with FCT Technologies Incorporated of Miami, Florida, for the supply of 28 submersible wastewater pumps for the upgrade of the sewage system in the city. He was forced to terminate the contract because he was not satisfied that the contractor would fulfil his obligation within the stipulated time.

Kaieteur News earlier reported that failure to upgrade the Georgetown sewage system over the years has left the Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) with a collapsing mess and the challenge of urgently meeting modern specifications to reverse the current state-of-affairs.

This notion was highlighted recently by a source close to the water entity.

The source says a trend, which saw the neglect of the system started even when the water entity was being controlled by the Georgetown municipality through the Georgetown Sewerage and Water Commissioners (GS&WC).

It was related to this newspaper that even at the 1929 commissioning of the central sewage system it was common knowledge that the pumps within the system had the capacity to function optimally for a maximum of 60 years.

As such even before it was handed over to the GWI in 2002 the system had already been exhausted.

GWI Public Relations Officer, Rawle Aaron, attributed the deterioration of the system primarily to the lack of sufficient funds to effect necessary changes. “It could not have been rehabilitated because funding always came in a piece-meal fashion and not in a lump sum,” Aaron said.

And while constant maintenance works were carried out, he noted that there was no replacement of the pumps that ceased operating over the years.

In the meantime, customers will have to endure a sewage system on the verge of a collapse.

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