The inundated community of Dochfour on the East Coast Demerara should be declared a disaster area, the Guyana Citizens Initiative (GCI) said yesterday as it underscored the seriousness of the situation, with residents there living in polluted, stagnant water for over two weeks.
Without such a declaration, international agencies cannot be triggered to release the humanitarian assistance residents desperately need, the NGO said, in its first statement since floodwaters covered the farming community over two weeks ago.
Stabroek News had reported extensively on the situation affecting the community and the GCI statement yesterday said that, as has been well documented in the now daily media coverage, after close on two weeks, the villagers – men, women and children, have been living in an open sewer. “Unlike the clean conservancy black water of 2005, the still waters in which the villagers are marooned are polluted with the carcasses of animals and over-flowing latrines, and the usual mix of garbage and plastic. The waters have taken their toll in loss of livestock, in particular poultry. Sheep and goats have also perished. Kitchen gardens and cash-crop farms are under water. Household appliances, professional workshop equipment, hardware stocks, lie in ruins”, the NGO declared.
It noted that there is already some “spontaneous evacuation” occurring as mothers move small children to family members and, in at least one case, to complete strangers on higher ground.
Faced with high intensity rainfall comparable to levels that caused the 2005 Great Flood, the government has said that it is doing all it can to provide relief to inundated low-lying communities and defended the administration’s response to the flooding in Region Four (Demerara/Mahaica) during a debate in the National Assembly on Monday. Government spokesmen have accused the political opposition of trying to exploit the flooding for political mileage–a charge that was strenuously denied as the opposition sounded a warning that not enough is being done.
The GCI yesterday took up the call that the authorities’ response was lacking. “What has become depressingly clear is that the authorities, notwithstanding their protestations to the contrary, seem to have learned nothing from the experiences of the great flood of 2005 and are as unprepared in 2008 as they were in 2005. Why have they waited until the heavy rainfall to begin the work of clearing the outfalls at the Hope koker? Why was the winch at the Nootenzuil koker not repaired until a few days ago, after the attempt to raise the door with an excavator failed” the agency questioned.
Shambles
It noted that while Dochfour is the most gravely affected community, it is not the only one in the Hope/Ann’s Grove vicinity or in the wider upper ECD villages, as residents of communities including Buxton, Paradise, Bare Root, and Victoria, are counting their losses and preparing for “a season of misery”. Describing the humanitarian response to the situation as weak, the organization said that it is compounded “by the ongoing infrastructural shambles, where the lack of coordination among a plethora of state bodies is worsening the plight of the flood ravaged communities whose relief will only come with the efficient functioning of the kokers and internal drainage system in the villages.”
This newspaper had reported previously on the state of the Hope Koker, the main drainage structure for the Hope/Ann’s Grove area, which had been silted up for several months. The National Drainage and Irrigation Authority has since deployed excavators to clear the outfall, an action that is still ongoing. Yesterday, the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement that an additional mobile pump has been deployed to the Hope outfall. It said that pumps from areas that have been drained will be redeployed to affected communities and provide other support. Water in the various communities was reported as receding yesterday.
Fluctuated
A visit to several communities by this newspaper confirmed the water level had dropped in varying amounts but it fluctuated, residents said. High levels still remained in Dochfour; though it had dropped a few inches from the over two-feet level it was at previously. Some residents told this newspaper that they are running out of food supplies. They expressed frustration at the authorities’ response to their plight and said that persons visited and talked but only limited action was taken to assist them. Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud, visited the community for the first time yesterday, since it was inundated by high floodwaters over two weeks ago, residents reported.
However, they said that he only spent a short while before leaving and they had little chance to raise their concerns with him. However, they noted that Persaud said that an excavator would be sent there to clear some canals and a bypass would be dug to drain the area.
When Stabroek News left the area late yesterday, an excavator had arrived to clean the trench. The Agriculture Ministry statement said that Persaud and a team of Technical Officers and engineers visited affected areas to make additional interventions to accelerate water reduction and to meet with farmers and residents.
It said that during Persaud’s interaction with residents it was agreed that a second mobile pump will be installed at the Hope Outfall, while “two bypasses have been made to drain the area and surrounding communities”. He also highlighted that pumps from areas that have been drained will be redeployed to affected communities and provide other support, the release stated adding that “by 3:00 pm today these works had commenced.”
During this newspaper’s visit however, the bypasses could not be located and they had not been made up to late yesterday, residents reported. But another pump had just arrived at the Hope koker and was in the process of being offloaded, when this newspaper was in the area. Farmers at Hope Estate, who were evacuated from the Mahaica Creek to avoid persistent flooding and provided with houses aback of Hope, are also knee deep in floodwater with the savings they brought from the creek and invested in new gardens having been washed away, the CGI said.
Sickening
At Dochfour, limited food was a concern for some. Cenesse Beete, a single mother of two, was sending her children to stay with relatives due to the situation. When this newspaper caught up with her yesterday, she stated that the water was “sickening” and she and her neighbour’s food supplies were running low. She stated that while the Ministry of Health had visited, only a little cream and disinfectants were distributed. She said that what was also needed was some dry rations. “At least they could bring in some rice, lil dry food…everybody just talking”, she stated, her frustration evident.
Many other residents also voiced their frustration lamenting the loss of their crops and livestock and they stated that they would have no Christmas this year. Several flooded farms were pointed out, and it was stated that the waterlogged land stunted the growth of plants and many had simply rotted. More carcasses of poultry and other animals such as pigs were visible than on previous visits and the stagnant water harboured many worms and residents complained of skin infections. “Nobody ain’t doing nothing”, said one resident.
Private estate owners
Meantime, the Govern-ment Information Agency (GINA) also reported yesterday the Dochfour and Beehive residents had told Persaud that private estate owners were compounding the drainage problem in their communities since the estates did not have proper drainage systems in place. They had also expressed their belief to this newspaper that the silted up Hope koker was the main cause of their flood woes.
GCI yesterday also noted the response of the Civil Defence Commission (CDC) asserting that to date, the agency has not convened a meeting of civil society organizations to widen and coordinate a response to the current emergency. It said that the recent report that the CDC has delivered water to the Dochfour/Anns Grove area is the first sign of life from the Commission and is to be welcomed. CGI recalled that in the aftermath of the 2005 flood, it had called for the CDC to be put on a statutory basis, empowered and resourced by an Act of Parliament. “The CDC cannot function as the primary disaster response institution if it continues to be shackled by the Office of the President, arising from its slumber only when the President returns to base. GCI had also called for the regionalization of the CDC to enable it to respond to local disasters far from Georgetown. GCI is not aware of a single regional CDC operation. The CDC needs to have a presence in all ten regions of the country”, the NGO declared.
It added that the “well-advertised high-profile” Disaster Preparedness programmes carried out by OXFAM and the European Union seem to have made little or no impact of the flood prone communities that were targeted and this is also an area of work that should properly be the responsibility of a restructured CDC that must carry out disaster preparedness activities in a systematic and routine manner.
Further, CGI noted the effect of the dumping of garbage. “How much more damage needs to be caused by the indiscriminate dumping of plastic bags, bottles, and styrofoam boxes in the drainage canals before the government takes action to bring this menace under control? Increasingly, governments across the world are finding it necessary to ban the use of plastic bags entirely and to impose strict controls on the use of Styrofoam containers. What are we in Guyana waiting for”, it asked.
CGI said too that while widespread publicity is being given to the works being done on the drainage infrastructure, it is necessary that equal publicity be given to the action being taken by the CDC and other arms and services of the Government, in collaboration with NGOs and Civil Society Organisations, to address the deteriorating human condition and the stress to which residents in the flood affected areas are being subjected.
During this newspaper’s visit to the East Coast Demerara yesterday, it was noted that in areas such as the Dazzell Housing Scheme and Enterprise, water had receded from the high level it was a week ago but there was still some present and the level kept fluctuating, residents said. Water remained on the unpaved streets of the Dazzell Scheme and also in many yards. Residents blamed the drainage system for the water being on the land for so long.
Meantime, heavy rainfall of about three inches yesterday has resulted in flooding in Rainbow City and Kara Kara in Linden. Cloudy conditions with some showers are expected today with moderately wet conditions expected for the rest of the month.
