A Ministry of Public Works maintenance crew yesterday transported wooden planks to shore up the rapidly eroding Salem, East Bank Essequibo sea dam.
According to residents, workmen from the maintenance crew visited the site yesterday and delivered the planks, which were just left there.
“Them should do the wuk properly and this wood them bring here can’t do nutten, them got fuh start building the dam up,” a resident said, during a telephone interview.
The visit by the workmen followed a report in yesterday’s Stabroek News on the poor state of the Salem sea defences.
The residents blamed the infrequent maintenance works on the dam as one of the elements of its erosion. “If them been tek care of this dam it would have last longer,” lamented a resident.
Stabroek News was unable to reach acting Chief Hydraulics Officer Kevin Samad for a comment on the situation.
Samad had told this newspaper on Wednesday that bids for rehabilitation works at Salem are being reviewed and the contract is expected to be awarded within the next two weeks. He added that the maintenance crew on the West Coast of Demerara would visit the location and assess the damages and put interim measures in place to avoid further breaching.
When Stabroek News visited the area on Wednesday, it was observed that two sections of the dam were breaking away.
There was also a wall that acts as a water shield that is also eroding and it looked as if it could collapse at anytime.
The last time major work was done on the dam was in May, 2009 and it began eroding sometime the next year, according to residents. A resident, who asked not to be named, had told this newspaper that for the past three years he has been pushing to have more sturdy sea defence mechanisms in place for Salem residents but every time his proposals have been shunned by authorities.
Meanwhile, another resident stated that remedial works were completed on the same breaches some two months ago but that exercise served no purpose since the dam kept eroding. He stated that approximately twelve men took two months to erect a concrete structure not more than six feet in length.
The man said that he is positive the dam will collapse before the authorities look into it, since it has been eroding for over two years. He added that there are several bags of sand simply dumped on the dam and left there, which he dubbed a waste of money.
