Dear Editor,
Just as the residents and farmers of Dantzig-Columbia in Region 5 had feared, the high tides of this past week have brought another round of flooding and more destruction of crops and loss of livestock.
This is the latest round of flooding, which has become a factor of life for over a year now. Every high tide now brings new flooding and more agony for farmers and residents living between the Mahaica and Mahaicony rivers in an area stretching from Dantzig to Fairfield. Even as the threats intensify and reach crisis proportion, the project to construct a new sea defence structure in the area, which was started in 2014/2015, is still stalled; nothing has been done since 2015.
The most that the APNU+AFC Government can speak of is that they had mobilised BK, A&S and M&B Construction, but no meaningful work has been done.
As this new episode of high tide comes, fearful Region 5 farmers — especially those in the Dantzig-Columbia area, including villages like Cottage and Broom Hall — are bracing for more agony. Even as this new episode of flooding brings more suffering, the farmers are still recovering from the devastation of the last episode of high tide, which occurred several weeks ago.
There are 3,000 acres of land (at least 300 acres of rice land) still inundated with salt water, and cannot be used for another two years because of salt water destruction from the last flooding a few weeks ago, and this new flooding adds to the devastation.
Crops, including rice and cash crops, and cattle and other livestock have been lost, and more will now be lost. In addition, the new floods add to the threat that some of the salt water-damaged land will not be available for another two years because of prolonged salt water inundation. As the lands of more than 150 farmers and their families suffer more salt water inundation this week, farmers are still waiting for Government to demonstrate any meaningful concern. In the meanwhile, with the newest floods, there is more jeopardy for hundreds of other farmers and more than 15,000 acres inland.
The pleas of the farmers and their families have fallen on deaf ears. The advocacy of the Regional Chairman and the RDC have been ignored. The PPP Presidential Candidate Irfaan Ali and PPP General Secretary and other leaders have visited the affected areas and have urged Government to help, but the Government has been AWOL, MIA. Except for some cursory interest, the problems these farmers face have been mostly neglected by Government officials. Noel Holder steers far away from these genuinely devastating problems farmers face. The illegal Minister of Infrastructure has been busy lying to people about the many failures and the dozens of empty promises they have made to people. David Granger, Moses Nagamootoo and the rest of the APNU+AFC show no sign they are even aware of what’s happening.
For the last year, high tide after high tide has caused major flooding in the Dantzig-Columbia area. More than a year ago, the Chairman of Region 5 had advised the sea defence department of the Ministry of Infrastructure that sea defence structures in the area are in disrepair, and unless immediate remedial actions are initiated, these structures would crumble.
Just before local government elections were held in November 2018, residents and farmers from the area had publicly expressed concern. Before that, the Region 5 RDC, through its Chairman, had appealed for help, cautioning that farmers would lose their livelihoods if immediate action was not taken.
The appeals of the residents, farmers, RDC and the General Secretary and other leaders of the PPP went unheeded. The negligence now necessitates major investment in the sea defence structure for this area — an investment that appears far in the future, when it would be too late to prevent major poverty from taking over this area, and by which time valuable arable land would have been lost.
After the last episode of flooding a few weeks ago, flooding that still persists for most of the areas north of the highway, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, shamed into a late and feeble response, started to construct a temporary inland dam to bring some relief to residents from future inundation. The latest episode of flooding in the past few days has proven that this late, hasty, and “unfit and improper” action can neither bring relief for the residents, nor prevent further flooding from affecting hundreds of acres of farmland north of the highway.
In addition, farmlands inland south of the highway are also threatened by saltwater encroachment in the inland canals. Because of the porous, collapsing sea defence, salt water keeps encroaching into the canals, making its way into and affecting farmlands far inland. While about 3,000 acres of arable land north of the highway are directly affected by floodwaters every time high tides come, another 15,000 acres are threatened because this flood water enters and brings salt water into the Bellamy Canal, which distributes it through the north-south drainage canals into farming areas far away from the sea defence structure. In addition, the saltwater spills from drainage structures into irrigation structures. The salt water does not only cause immediate losses of crops and livestock, affecting the earnings of families and threatening greater poverty in the area, but already close to 1,000 acres of land are not usable for the next two years, and thousands more are under threat of being permanently lost to agriculture unless somebody does something.
Sadly, APNU+AFC do not seem interested, because they figure there is no vote to be earned.
This stretch of sea defence has been vulnerable for decades. Before 2015, the MMA, the NDIA and the Sea Defence Department in the Ministry of Infrastructure had collaborated to ensure the integrity of the sea defence. The MMA, in collaboration with the Sea Defence Department, had for many years maintained the northern dam of the Bellamy Canal; and, in 2013/2014, had buttressed the dam between the Mahaicony River on the east and Spring Hall on the west. The Ministry of Agriculture’s Mangrove Extension Department had expanded and strengthened the mangrove defense between 2011 and 2015, and the Ministry of Works (Infrastructure) had begun to build a supplemental defence by armouring the sea defense dam with boulders. But since 2015, much of the efforts have stalled. The mangrove programme in this area was discontinued. The existing mangrove trees in fact appear to have been destroyed. The boulder armouring of the dam by the Infrastructure Ministry stopped soon after May 2015. The collaboration of the MMA with NDIA and the Ministry of Infrastructure is now non-existent, leading to no maintenance of the Bellamy Canal dam.
This negligence/disinterest by APNU+AFC in the problems posed by the sea for farmers in the Dantzig-Columbia area is just the latest example of the disrespect APNU+AFC has shown for farmers and for agriculture since May 2015. More flooding is inevitable, as the collapsing sea defence structure in the Dantzig-Columbia area becomes worse from APNU+AFC’s neglect and disinterest.
Farmers’ losses are now moving from existing crops and livestock to permanent losses of their farmlands, losses of livelihoods, and more people becoming impoverished. In the midst of this injustice, David Granger is now promising that agriculture is the future for Guyana. These empty, shameful promises fooled many people in 2015. In 2020, these empty promises have a light shining on them, and no one will fall for the lies.
Sincerely,
Dr. Leslie
Ramsammy