Dear Editor,
Please refer to the Guyana Chronicle article of October 23, 2010, about the new Doppler Radar system that was launched in the year 2009. This article stated that the Hydromet Office in collaboration with our very own NCN launched this first modernized weather forecaster in Timehri. This article said, “The National Weather Watch Centre provides Guyana with improved forecasting accuracies, strengthens early warning systems and as such alleviates and even prevents losses by droughts or floods from happening.”
After spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money including that from rice farmers from Mahaica and Mahai-cony to build this modern Doppler Radar the government used the state media to assure farmers that there would be a significant decrease in crop losses as a consequence of adverse weather conditions.
Now farmers in Mahaica and Mahai-cony will have to endure their most feared nightmare all over again. Apparently this new technology turned out to be like the Skeldon Sugar Factory and did not serve its purpose.
I have explained before in a letter to this newspaper (about the Cummings Lodge Development Centre), how this government is in the habit of quoting amounts of money in the state media just to fool their supporters, and the above is another example. When a government treats the persons that put them in office like this then they do not have any respect for them whatsoever. But the bigger problem is how these supporters treat the government. They do not demand value for money and the mere utterance that the administration has spent millions is like music to their ears.
After so many billions of dollars have been spent on drainage and weather-forecasting technology it seems that we are back to where we were in 2005. Whom do you blame? The government. I do not think so. If you have a major portion of the population that treats government officials like gods, even though these ‘gods’ have scant regard for their concerns then how would you have progress? People deserve the government they voted for.
Yours faithfully,
R M Khan
