Had the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) begun to pump water from the Pomeroon River into the Tapakuma Conservancy months ago, the farmers along the river would have suffered from salt water intrusion, NDIA head Frederick Flatts says.
In the wake of criticism that the agency and the Ministry of Agriculture had, despite advice, failed to ensure that Tapakuma Conservancy in Region Two was filled for the dry-weather phenomenon El Nino, Flatts told Stabroek News on Thursday that the NDIA is doing the best it can to assist farmers affected by the prolonged dry season.
The severity of the dry weather is hitting farmers across the country hard and Stabroek News has reported that thousands of acres of paddy across Regions two, three, five and six are under threat due to a lack of adequate water and full blown water rationing is on the agenda if the situation worsens. The situation has particularly affected farmers in Region Two who rely on the Tapakuma Conservancy.
In a letter to Stabroek News concerning the situation in Region Two, engineer Charles Sohan said that the operation and maintenance of the Tapakuma Drainage and Irrigation Project (TDIP) was allowed to deteriorate to the extent that the infrastructure is falling apart, the irrigation pumps are working on and off because of fuel shortage and water levels in the main canal have been allowed to drop to elevations too low for quick build-ups to facilitate gravity irrigation, unless there is supplemental rainfall to assist with the topping up.
“There is plenty of fresh water now in the Pomeroon River awaiting to be pumped to irrigate the parched rice fields along the coast, but this had to be done well ahead of the anticipated needs of the farmers and not on a crisis basis,” he wrote.
When contacted by Stabroek News, Flatts said he would not agree with what Sohan said and while everything did not happen as perfectly as he would have preferred, the NDIA is doing the best it can to assist the farmers.
“If you were to do that (pump water from Pomeroon to Tapakuma), then the farmers in the Pomeroon would’ve been exposed to the salt water months before and their crops would’ve died,” he said. “There isn’t much to say about the Tapakuma Conservancy. It’s a big lake and that holds water. When it’s low, it’s low and when it’s high, it’s high so I don’t see how it could be in deplorable conditions,” he asserted.
The NDIA head also said that the Dawa pump was not meant to work all the time. “Dawa wasn’t made for working all the time. It was made for special conditions like what we have right now with El Nino. I went there two days ago and it’s working perfectly fine and doing what it has to do,” he declared.
Flatts stressed that the agency has to prioritise. “It’s like this: when you give to one, the other one loses but unfortunately the situation is more dire in Mahaica and Mahaicony and we have to give them the priority,” he added.
“We are doing a lot. I wouldn’t say we can’t do more but right now we are doing a lot for the Mahaica and Mahaicony farmers,” Flatts asserted. He revealed that there are currently four pumps that are working 24/7 at Mahaica and Mahaicony. Stabroek News was told that the four pumps are pumping a large amount of water daily, at the cost of $800,000 per day.
“That’s not even considering transportation and other expenses but we have to do it. Lots of them are getting water now, I know this because I have been there myself,” Flatts said. He predicted that based on the weather pattern, the pumping will be ongoing for about a month. He said while there are four pumps working, one is starting to “limp” and as such might be taken off. “Even if we take off one of them, the output will still be relatively the same because we are going to send the same fuel and the other three pumps will just work more,” he said.
