For years, a stretch of over 100-year-old water mains along Georgetown’s Church Street has been a persistent, costly problem for Guyana’s state-owned water utility, Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI). Despite repeated public promises to fully replace the aging infrastructure years ago, the company has only carried out temporary patchwork repairs – racking up millions of Guyanese dollars in annual expenses for recurring leak repairs that could have been avoided with a full replacement.
The problem is concentrated in a high-traffic central district near key Guyanese institutions: the National Library, the Bank of Guyana, and Guyana Stores. Local industry sources familiar with the issue confirm that the pipeline network suffered at least 12 major bursts in 2025 alone, with four more leaks already recorded in the first four months of 2026.
Each leak comes with staggering hidden and direct costs for the utility. In 2025, data shows excavation, pipe repairs, and subsequent road restoration cost GWI more than GY$1 million per individual incident. When the Ministry of Public Works is unable to complete road repairs after GWI fixes a leak, the utility is forced to hire private contractors to restore the roadway for vehicle access, adding further unplanned expenses. Beyond direct repair costs, GWI also loses significant revenue every time a break occurs: workers must cut or reduce water pressure to complete repairs, which prevents residential water tanks from being refilled overnight, cutting into the utility’s billed water output.
The persistent leaks and repeated repair work have also caused collateral damage to public infrastructure in the area. A section of the pedestrian sidewalk directly outside the National Library has been completely destroyed, weakened by ongoing water seepage from the burst pipes and repeated vehicle movement from repair crews and passing traffic that has eroded the damaged walking surface.
Why has the full replacement project, promised repeatedly by GWI leadership, not moved forward? The main justification cited by officials has been concerns over traffic disruption in the already congested central business district.
As far back as July 2025, GWI Chief Executive Officer Shaik Baksh publicly assured residents and stakeholders that the old water mains would be fully replaced before the end of that year. At the time, he explained the phased approach was designed to limit gridlock: “Because of the heavy traffic flow, we don’t want to disrupt traffic along that whole area so have to do phase by phase.” When the project did not break ground by the end of 2025, it remained unstarted into 2026.
Speaking to Demerara Waves Online News on March 21, 2026, current Public Utilities Minister Deodat Indar repeated the same traffic concerns, noting that any full pipe replacement would require special traffic management arrangements to mitigate widespread disruption. “We have to schedule to work as there would be a major disruption of traffic,” Indar stated. When pressed, however, the minister was unable to provide any concrete timeline for when full replacement work would actually begin. The most recent leak in the area has already worsened, bringing renewed urgency to the long-unresolved problem, with no clear end in sight.