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Free and Easy residents get water tanks on World Water Day
Guyana yesterday joined the rest of the world in observing World Water Day, but for many in the country, getting potable water is a major problem.
Take the community of Free and Easy, the last village on West Bank Demerara, for example. Yesterday, Kaieteur News met 49-year-old widow, Chandrowtie Khan, in a shack in the poorest section of Free and Easy. She did not have drinking water.
President of the Georgetown Rotary Club Pradeep Samtani presents a 450-gallon water tank to Free and Easy resident, Joy Harris.
She said that she had to wait on her grandson to come home from work so that he would load up his bicycle with two yellow five-gallon bottles and ride off to get water some distance away where potable water is available.
Free and Easy, located an estimated 14 miles from the Demerara Harbour Bridge, has no access to potable water through their taps – there are no pipelines running under the dry earth of this community.
With the continuous dry spell, the canal has been reduced to a small stream of salt water coming into the village from the Demerara River.
The fresh water canal on the other side of the road is sometimes used to get water to wash kitchen wares and clothes, but even that has dried out. Even when the canal does have water, it is not possible to use when cane punts of the nearby Wales Sugar Estate are being used or when the sugarcane is sprayed with fertilisers.
Guyana Water Incorporated supplies clean water for drinking and cooking, sometimes twice a week, Laurell Smith told Kaieteur News. However, most of the residents of Free and Easy were without large storage tanks.
As a result, the Rotary Club of Georgetown decided that it was going to help out after Smith pleaded for help. The Club has thus far provided nine 450-gallon tanks to the poorest residents of the area.
Joy Harris, who finds it difficult to get drinking water for her family that includes seven children, is grateful for the tank.
She said that she will be able to store more water, either when the tractor comes in with water or whenever the rain falls.
President of the Club, Pradeep Samtani, presented some of the tanks yesterday, underscoring the importance of access to clean and safe water.
Laurell Smith said earlier that residents of the community have made efforts to get potable water into the village, even by way of a shallow well. She said efforts were made through such projects as Basic Needs Trust Fund and the Poor Rural Communities Services Project, but to no avail.
The residents of Free and Easy are grateful for the water tanks and now they await the rain to full them up.
For now, they will have to continue putting out their barrels to receive water whenever the tractor passes, but for those living as far as Joy Harris does, they must walk or ride to get water, a task which is by no means easy.
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