Dear Editor,
It is interesting that the Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) is establishing water-refilling stations and entering the business of selling bottled water.
Citizens are now expected to pay GWI their regular monthly water bill, and then pay GWI again to refill or purchase bottled water. This raises a very simple but important question: Why can’t GWI provide the same quality of water being offered at its refilling stations and in its bottles directly through the taps of every Guyanese household?
If GWI has the capacity to produce and distribute water of a quality suitable for bottling and public sale, then surely the greater priority should be ensuring that this same quality of water is consistently available through the national water distribution system.
Instead, GWI appears to be positioning itself to compete with private businesses that have invested in the bottled and purified water market. While making refills and bottled water cheaper and more accessible may sound commendable, we must ask: What could possibly be more accessible than having safe, clean, quality drinking water flowing directly from the tap in every home?
This is not an argument against making quality drinking water more affordable. It is an argument about priorities, public service and good governance.
GWI is a public utility. Its fundamental responsibility should be to provide reliable, safe and affordable water to the population, not to create another revenue stream by selling citizens a product that they should ideally be receiving through the very infrastructure they are already paying to maintain.
There is something fundamentally misplaced about GWI having the capacity to bottle and sell high-quality drinking water while many citizens still have legitimate concerns about the quality, reliability and consistency of the water coming from their taps.
Perhaps the real question policymakers should be asking is not, “How can we make bottled water cheaper?” but rather, “How do we make the water coming from every Guyanese household’s tap safe enough that people no longer feel the need to buy bottled water?”
That would be a far more meaningful measure of development.
Regards,
Clayon F. Halley
Discussion