Guyana’s International Building Expo was held for the second year on July 29th-31st, 2011 following the success of the first Expo held in 2010. The Building Expo was born out of a partnership between the Government of Guyana in particular the Ministry of Housing and Water and the Central Housing and Planning Authority and the Private Sector as a means of expanding the building and construction sectors as well as responding to the housing and construction needs of the country.
GWI’s Public Relations Officer, Mr. Timothy Austin explained that the concept of GWI’s rainwater harvesting booth at the event was taken from GWP-C’s public education work involving building regional awareness on rainwater harvesting and its benefits.
Mr. Austin expressed that the utility company wants to create more awareness about the need for rainwater harvesting in the current “climatic conditions” in Guyana and will be seeking to not only create awareness about the type of water conservation but also invoke a new culture in the Guyanese public.
GWI aimed to push the message that rainwater harvesting must be done carefully and must follow specific guidelines and best practices to ensure that the quality of the water stored is not compromised.
In emphasising this message, the GWI booth contained educational material including brochures, pamphlets, posters and other forms of information to provide all visitors to the booth with enough knowledge on the core subject area. GWI included the GWP-C logo on all promotional material used in their booth. They also utilised some of GWP-C’s material on rainwater harvesting such as posters and leaf-lets. The GWI booth was very interactive with the company’s customer service agents available at the booth to answer any questions and queries visitors may have had about their service or billing system.
GWI’s Public Relations Officer explained that the organisation has witnessed the consistent increase in demand for water in both existing and new housing and commercial areas. Thus in responding to that demand, GWI seeks t continue to improve its service while at the same time underscoring the important role consumers play in paying their bills on time and safeguarding the scarce water resource.
The 2011 Expo like the first held in the previous year successfully brought together a host of local, regional and international stakeholders within and outside of the building and construction sector. The GWI booth was one of more than 100 booths at the Building Expo which included 15 foreign (regional and international) companies. Moreover, the event saw an estimated number of 50,000 visitors with a noted number of foreign participants over the three-day period.