Minister of Agriculture Dr Leslie Ramsammy said officers from the Livestock and Crop Division are in Canal Number 2 to assess damages and prepare compensation packages for farmers affected by recent flooding.
Now that the water has receded from their lands, farmers are restarting land preparation exercises, though they have said that this is proving more costly than they can afford, noting that the price of fertilizer is rapidly increasing. They also told Stabroek News that now that the trenches have been dug and the Stanleytown pump operating,they don’t fear flooding, provided that maintenance work continues.
In response to a query about why neither he nor Junior Minister Ali Baksh has visited the area, Ramsammy said he had been travelling across the country and that he would visit the area at an “appropriate time.” Baksh, who was supposed to visit the area yesterday, said that he was in Essequibo and was unaware of the new developments at Canal Number Two.
Meanwhile, Head of the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority Lionel Wordsworth said that his department had deployed two excavators to the area and they have cleaned over six miles of the main drainage canal. He said one of the machines is at Clay Brick, in the Belle West Housing Scheme, where a door is being built in the drain to control the volume of water that flows into the main canal. Wordsworth also said there were reports there were three small cuts on the Sea Line and an excavator was immediately deployed to the area to mend them.
Vinod Jaghdir, who told this newspaper that he lost millions of dollars worth of crops, is now at contemplating his next move to get his fields ready for cultivation. To get started again, Jaghdir needs at least four bags of fertilizer, which cost $9,000 each and pesticides, including Bellis, Gramoxone, for the weeds that have began to shoot up. The cost of these pesticides range from $2,500 to $7,000. Jaghdir said he must start producing in order to make his mortgage payments.
