Residents of West Berbice were yesterday relieved that stagnant floodwater had started to recede after government deployed more pumps in the affected villages but said they were still being inconvenienced.
Terisa Rodney of Golden Grove told Stabroek News yesterday that the water was still at the front and the back of her yard.
She has to “fetch my three children, [ages nine, seven and five] in and out of the yard one by one on back morning and afternoon, to send to school. And I have to put on their clothes on the road. They get ground sore from the dirty water.”
She recalled that when the heavy rain came during the night several weeks ago, the water got into her pig pen and caused nine of the piglets to drown.
She said too that they suffered from that extent of flooding because the water “burst the dam… and the water also came from the rice field.”
Residents reported the matter to the Mahaica, Mahaicony, Abary-Agricultural Development Authority (MMA-ADA) and an excavator was sent to fix it.
Terrence Thomson, also of Golden Grove was happy that the water had receded, saying that it was over his knee in his yard.
He lives in a “flat concrete house,” which is about two feet off the ground and the water was “up to my front door.” He said he placed sandbags at the door to prevent the water from entering.
He was distressed at the loss of three of his goats, a sheep and 15 fowls, along with 60 eggs that he had put to “set for baby chicks.”
Thomson said residents had suggested that the tubes that are located at the Bush Lot and Golden Grove villages needed doors to keep the water out but they were never placed.
Meantime, at the cabinet press briefing yesterday, Minister of State, Joseph Harmon said that the flooding was due to heavy rainfall and “the fact that farmers were discharging water from their rice field.”
He said cabinet received reports that the height of the floodwaters, which ranged between 12 to 24 inches, had resulted in loss of livestock and cash crop.
“As a result of the report, cabinet was advised that a certain course of action was taken and it is consistent with other action that the government had taken,” he said.
He said too that the flooding in Region 5 was partly due to water flowing down from Moraikobai and that “the Ministry of Agriculture and the Civil Defence Commission had taken certain steps to alleviate that situation.”
According to him, government has advised that two mobile pumps were to be deployed at Trafalgar and one at Bush Lot, with a total discharge capacity of 1,200 gallons of water per second.
Harmon said too that six tractor-operated pumps were also deployed at strategic points in the villages, while four excavators have been deployed to clear the drainage canals and a pontoon with two excavators has been sent to clear the outfall channel at Trafalgar
Yesterday, a “top level team” from the government headed by Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, along with Minister of Citizenship, Winston Felix and Minister within the Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Karen Cummings, visited the affected areas
“Additionally, a team from the Ministry of (Public) Infrastructure also visited the area as a precursor to a visit by the Minister of (Public) Infrastructure, who looked at other works that needed to be done,” Harmon told the media.
