The PPP/C government has proposed a budget of over $5 billion to strengthen the sea and river defence infrastructure in regions Three, Five and Six, Minister of Finance Dr Ashni Singh announced.
In his budget presentation last Friday to the National Assembly, Singh said the money has been earmarked for construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of sea and river defences at Uitvlugt, Anna Catherina, Dantzig, Prospect, Content, Fair-field, Manila, Zealand, Cane Garden, and No. 63 Beach.
Singh announced that his government continues to take strenuous steps to protect the country’s vulnerable shoreline. The existing conventional hard-infrastructure solutions, he told the House, are expensive and are not adaptable to rising sea levels and climate change vulnerabilities. On this note, the Finance Minister said government intends to promote natural interventions in the form of groynes and restored mangrove forests from replanting and natural regeneration to complement the significant investment in hard-structures.
In the same breath he announced that $50 million has been budgeted to construct geotextile rubble groynes, and to conduct topographic surveys.
Further, he stressed that government continues to closely monitor the shore line and has reactivated the sea defence rangers, and started applying drone technology to monitor shore line movement and the erosion and accretion cycle. He noted, too, that there has been an intensified routine maintenance, and deploying stockpiles of armour rocks to strategic locations to ensure that quick response mechanisms are in place to avert breaches.
Along the Mahaicony coast, the mangrove fringe and other natural sea defences that were in place have been washed away, leaving just a narrow dam that is now exposed and rapidly eroding.
As a result the livelihoods of residents and farmers between Fairfield and Columbia have been threatened as they face millions in losses in the event of unexpected flooding during abnormal tides.
During a 2018 engagement at the University of Guyana’s 21st installment of its Turkeyen and Tain Talks “Green Building for Resilient Future Cities,” former Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson, announced that $14 billion was needed between 2020 and 2022 to effect “urgent” repairs to 32.9 kilometers of Guyana’s sea defence. He had explained that if government fails to execute these works, communities across the coast will suffer a fate similar to that of Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara.
