Residents of Mahaicony Creek are distressed after they woke up yesterday morning and discovered that the water level had risen to about five inches even though the rains have eased.
The residents said they were already having a difficulty finding dry spots for their dwindling livestock and had suffered losses to their cash crops.
They believe that the excess water is as a result of the releasing of water from the East Demerara Water Conservancy via the Maduni and Lama sluices. On Tuesday the Ministry of Agriculture issued an advisory to this effect. But by the next day the ministry said they no longer had to release the water because the level had dropped.
Contacted last evening, Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud told this newspaper that the excess water in the creek was an effect of the spring tide. He said residents would get relief by tomorrow.
A resident said the “water didn’t get on me land too much” because of excavation work the government had provided to residents two years ago.
She said though that she was rearing hassars in a pond and the flood caused them to escape. She also lost about 20 roots of cassava.
Other residents said their animals were getting sick and they need drugs to treat them. According to them, “because the cows not getting the grass they not producing the milk to feed the calves.”
They also said that since the releasing of water caused them to suffer more flooding, the government should compensate them. Further, the residents said the attendants for the sluices are always negligent and would leave the doors open, resulting in more flooding.
Sundarlall Arjunne of Pine Ground told Stabroek News that the water has gotten into his kitchen. He had to move his stove and other items to the upper flat because “we can’t cook in the water.”
According to him, “Since the rain start we didn’t get so much flooding and if it was rainfall alone we woulda accept….”
Arjune pointed out that even before the water was released three of his calves caught cramp in the water and died after they “try fuh go behind dem mother.” The man also lost his poultry, which also died as a result of “cramp and snake bite.”
His brother, Ramdeo Arjune, also of Pine Ground said his pepper, boulanger and sucker plants have “duck out. Every week I does reap about 20 pints of peppers but now me can’t get any.”
He built up the land around his farm to keep the water out and would bail the little that accumulated. But yesterday morning he lost the battle after the water seeped over and flooded his farm.
He said too that a few days ago a snake bit his 15-year-old son and he visited the health centre at Mora Point.
The other staff contacted the medex who told him that they “did not have drugs for snake bite.”
The man had to hire a boat and car at a cost of over $11,000 to take his son to the Mahaicony Hospital. The boy’s foot is still swollen.
Sewsankar Seedyal said too that his “garden duck out” and he lost 300 roots of bora, 300 roots of peppers as well as cassava and plantain plants.
His ducks also swam away. He was rearing fish, including hassars in a pond to sell and all have escaped.
Seedyal said too that his wife was cooking in the kitchen downstairs around 7:30 am yesterday when she noticed “a big snake coiled up in a corner.” She screamed and ran out and refused to return to the kitchen. He killed the snake and had to finish off the cooking. He recalled that a few weeks ago he went to the backdam, three miles away from home to fish and a snake bit him.
Bleeding profusely, he visited the health centre in the creek but the facility was closed up. He was forced to get someone to “cut out the [poisoned] piece of flesh with a cutlass….”
Meanwhile, he lamented that “ninety-five percent of the people in the creek don’t get work and the NDC [Neighbourhood Democratic Council] should share the work with residents.”
Instead, he said, the NDC “give the work to a contractor and he still gat to hire labourer and pay them lil and nothing….” He said too that the dams in the area were bad and the children are unable to attend school.
