The current May/June rains and what is being reported as their consequential widespread flooding, damage to homes, displacement of families and loss of income due mainly to flooding of lands under cultivation and inundation of pasture lands has been the subject of investigation by the Stabroek Business for the past two weeks.
Up to last Wednesday the newspaper had been in touch with farmers at some of the coastal extremes of the country. The rains and the attendant flooding continues and evidence of an official response notwithstanding, several pockets of emergency have emerged from what, reportedly, are some of the worst floods in the country’s recent history. The flooding appears to have affected, to varying degrees, all of the country’s ten administrative regions, reportedly rising by as much as eight to nine feet in some communities. The likelihood of long-term loss of earnings, particularly in the instances of farming communities, is high.