City Mayor Ubraj Narine yesterday dismissed as “nonsensical” and “utter foolish reasoning” allegations leveled against City Hall that it was responsible for flooding in Georgetown yesterday since the APNU+AFC-dominated council instructed operators to not open the kokers.
“I don’t know what political gimmick this is…and I find it very disgusting and distasteful that they, government ministers, are moving on this way to politicize this issue,” Narine told Stabroek News.
“It is just nonsensical and utter foolish reasoning because they claim our base is Georgetown. Why would we want to flood anyone and even more ever want to flood our base and ourselves?” he questioned.
The mayor was responding to allegations leveled at City Hall by PPP/C ministers that pump and sluice attendants in the city deliberately did not report for duty yesterday and as such the city was flooded by Saturday night’s heavy rain.
“This morning I received a report, around 3 am, that all the pumps in Georgetown were inoperable because the city council failed to get the operators to put on the pumps and open the sluices. It seems this is a deliberate ploy to get the city flooded because over the past few weeks we have seen high intensity of rainfall and we had minimal flooding in the city,” Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha yesterday said on the social media platform Facebook.
“It seems they want to cause problem in the city. The city council has been neglecting the supervision of these infrastructure in the city. So much so that I had to get NDIA (National Drainage and Irrigation Authority) to go around and monitor these pumps and monitor these sluices. This show the lack of commitment by the city council. It seems a deliberate ploy to flood out the city and thus the city council must take full responsibility for it”, he added.
Adding to the claims of sabotage was the Minister of Public Works and the Minister in the Ministry of Housing.
“APNU operatives continue to sabotage the progress we are making as a country. All the sluice operators fell asleep at the same time? They expect people to believe that? This callous disregard for people’s lives and livelihoods has to stop,” Minister in the Ministry of Housing Susan Rodrigues wrote on her Facebook page.
“It is a fact that we had heavy rainfall overnight but we have had heavy rainfall last week, we have had heavy rainfall before. A check has found that most of the pump attendants were not in place to have the pump running. They slept away. This is not a major flooding this water will run off. The pumps should have been running while the sluice doors were closed and that did not happen. This is neglect by the Mayor and City Council,” Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill said.
According to Edghill, yesterday morning he tried calling City Engineer Colvern Venture to join him on a check of the capital to assess the flooding but he had not joined him. Calls were also placed to the Mayor, according to Edghill and “the Mayor hasn’t answered me yet”.
The Mayor said no missed calls were seen from Edghill and everyone knows how easy it is for him to be reached.
Narine said that on learning of the flooding early yesterday morning he went out with a team to assess.
“You cannot assess a pump by driving through. You have to come out of your vehicle to know what is happening. So I would like to rebut the claims. All the pumps are operational when I checked,” he said.
Narine said that if flooding in the city is City Hall’s fault, government should say the reason all the other regions are flooded. “From Region 1 to Region 9 is flooded, why blame Mayor and City Council? That is what I want to know. Deal with the matter. Don’t make it a political gimmick,” the Mayor said.
