It is heartening that swiftly upon his return President Jagdeo has once again immersed himself in the details of the flooding in the country. However, the President has to be aware that his statements on this matter and his visits can often appear to be public relations stunts rather than substantial grappling with the problems. During his visit to the Liliendaal pump station on Thursday, the President announced that the government would be taking over responsibility for these aging pumps because of the negligence of the city’s administration. There are two problems here.
Central government is muscling in on the functions of the largest and most important local government administration in the country. The city has a right to be outraged even if it is the case that its record over the last 14 years has been lacklustre and rife with incompetence and maladministration. Nevertheless, in the midst of the snail-like reform of local government, it would be exceedingly difficult to trust this government with respecting the delineations between the various tiers of governance, once the reforms are in place, if it was to proceed with its takeover. That is not to say that in conditions of catastrophic flooding or some other emergency that the government shouldn’t exercise its authority to bring to bear the maximum resources to deal with crises. That is not to say that within the ambit of the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority Act that the government should be limited in its degrees of action.
This leads into the second problem. Had the government acted determinedly in 2005 following the Great Flood it may have already been able to rectify many of the problems besetting the drainage of the city and the lower East Coast. For at least a decade leading up to 2005 and certainly thereafter it had been clear to those who have responsibility in these matters that the two pumps at Liliendaal were no longer reliable, could not work round the clock because of power supply issues and as a result mobile pumps also had to be stationed there to boost the pumping capacity. In a letter in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek, Malcolm Alli, a former Chief Hydraulics Officer noted that all four pumps at the Kitty and Liliendaal stations have outlived their life expectancy. Why didn’t President Jagdeo, counselled by his ministers of local government and public works, move since 2005 as had apparently been the intention to purchase new pumps for Liliendaal? President Jagdeo, his party and his ministers of government know full well that the city’s coffers cannot sustain capital expenditure of the magnitude of pump replacement. On any given day of the year, the city struggles to make ends meet. While this has not been mitigated by its inefficiencies and graft, a major problem has been that PPP/C governments since 1994 have stood firmly in the way of the city expanding its financial base and gaining the opportunity to act independently of central government in securing the city from flooding. Anyone in government who denies this is simply not a believer in facts.
Had President Jagdeo embarked on protecting the city with greater expedition he would not have had to bemoan the state of Georgetown and the lower East Coast during his visit on Thursday. Indeed, had new infrastructure been in place and not been properly functioning under the control of the city there would not have been many citizens in the country who would have opposed his seizing control of the pumps. The reality is however that three years have been frittered away by the Jagdeo administration in securing the fortunes of the city and elsewhere despite the full knowledge of the intense and increasingly erratic weather systems the country faces.
And whose pumps might now be seized as a result of the flooding that has besieged small communities like Dochfour, Dazzell and Hope? After all, it is the state’s NDIA which has overarching responsibilities for these. Or is it that the suffering in these communities is inevitable and the hundreds of residents under two feet and more of water must simply bear their chafe?
Post-2005, it was the government’s obligation and duty to carefully analyse the threat to Guyana, its peoples and their livelihoods. The floods came again on a lesser scale in 2006 but there has been enough time for fundamental change. However, the government’s outlook can be described as two-track: tinkering and waiting for some cash-rich donor country or multilateral institution to come forward when urgent and drastic action is needed now.
Officials with responsibility for flood relief have with great satisfaction trotted out figures like $1.7B spent for the year 2008 and in yesterday’s newspapers the NDIA presented a long list of works done. In the main these are works that would be consistent with regular maintenance of the vast array of drainage systems under its purview. Reference has also been made to the implementation of the US$3.8M World Bank-funded East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) adaptation project and approaches to donor countries such as Japan and China. None of these will immediately secure the short-term needs of the country.
While climate change is an essential truth that cannot be readily refuted, the international community, as demonstrated at the disappointing climate conference in Poznan, Poland last week will not be forking out large sums to countries like Guyana on avoided deforestation mechanisms to redress problems like chronic flooding. Guyana has to find from its own hard-earned resources the means with which to protect its people and hope that others join its efforts at some point. This will mean hard-nosed prioritizing of spending and the elimination of reckless expenditure as was the case with the World Cup stadium and Carifesta.
It has been well known that there are four or five major projects requiring at least US$50M each – around the amount spent on the world cup – which would vastly improve Guyana’s ability to stave off catastrophic flooding like that of 2005. Some of these projects have been spoken about since President Jagdeo was the Minister of Finance so he should be well aware of them and should by now be able to determine speedily which of these should be implemented before his term in office ends.
Among these are the securing and rebuilding of sections of the EDWC if deemed feasible, drainage infrastructure for the Mahaica and Mahaicony Creeks and the reorienting of the city’s drainage and replacement of pumps and installation of others. There are others such as the building of a new outlet to the Atlantic Ocean from the EDWC which has been spoken about by the government since 2005 but not executed up to now and the routine dredging of the mouths of rivers and creeks which are vital in periods of flooding. There are also many kokers and pumps to be replaced such as the one at Ithaca whose door collapsed even though there had been repeated warnings about it. Overcoming problems such as the weak Ithaca koker requires a rigorous maintenance and inspection programme under the NDIA and local government bodies and this is not happening.
The tinkering has to stop and the government has to come to grips with the visionary decisions.
