By A. A. Fenty
Funny, but I suppose it is human nature to take for granted what is much sought after and treasured by others. Like a parent’s care or a partner’s love; the freedom to worship together; to access free HIV treatment; to drink alcohol in public or to actually enjoy fresh, unpolluted ozone air on some section of our coastal sea-wall.You miss the water only when the well runs dry unexpectedly. I grew up well into my thirties taking for granted like thousands of other Guyanese, “free” water, good rice, sugar and cheap protein – rich fish: Yes my generation, in our youth, just enjoyed ever– present electricity, rice and sugar. To his credit the early Forbes Burnham made it his personal policy that we in Guyana should “show off” on our resources – poor Caribbean Cousins by enjoying the world’s cheapest sugar, rice and fish! And yes, we took it all for granted.
How life and things have changed since those seventies!
That is why I choose today to extol the other “half” of Burnham: Cheddi Jagan’s tenacity and foresight with respect to the rice industry and the vital related issues of Drainage and Irrigation. All within the context of coastal flooding we seem destined to experience – then to blame global warming and climate change, only.
A Coolie/rice government?
I happen to know that the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), the Caribbean’s largest Bargaining Unit for workers, has published or will publish Dr Jagan’s strong views and programme on Agriculture and Flooding. And these are Cheddi’s insights of thirty-five to forty years ago!
It seems that Dr Jagan, in and out of government, in the forties and fifties, had understood the history and nature of the plantocracy’s and later the colonial management’s manipulation of drainage and irrigation to sabotage both the freed slaves and then the Indo-peasant farmers’ efforts at their own agriculture. Jagan embraced the plans of a British consulting engineer to the Public Works Department, F.E.Hutchinson who had come to British Guiana (BG) with a wealth of practical experience from India.
Perhaps this column and I won’t be doing justice to Dr Jagan’s earliest foresights by merely quoting a few Excerpts from his 1972 article. Those interested may get hold of the entire piece but here are a few choice indicators from Jagan’s active mind.
Early efforts at D&I: “… practically all well-drained land is in sugar … the areas devoted to rice and pasture are badly drained and abound in large swampy areas where almost amphibious cattle, sheep and pigs eke out an unusual existence.”
This is how the Royal (Moyne) Commission put it in its report of 1945.
Long before that, legislators including Joseph Eleazer of Buxton in the 1920 had petitioned the Colonial Office to tackle the problem of drainage and floods, so inimical to the farmers in the countryside.
“Speaking on drainage and irrigation in the Legislative Council, the then Governor, Sir Charles Woolley said:
“We have never had levels taken for the whole of our coastal belt, and we never had a department or sub-department concentrating solely on this work so vital to the biggest problem of all in the coastal belt. We have had consulting engineers and individual schemes, but there has never been a comprehensive survey on which we could frame more safely schemes of the kind we are embarking upon.”
Why the woeful neglect after nearly 150 years of British rule? Why before the coming of the PPP into government was there grave land hunger with the average farmer having only 3 3/4 acres of land in a country with only about 7 persons per square mile? Because the sugar plantocracy, faced with a labour shortage problem through the ending of slavery (1838) and of indenture (1917) and decimation of the population by malaria, did not want the development of an independent peasantry.”
“The plantocracy thus used their governmental power to monopolize the land on the coast, to prevent the leasing of colony and crown lands to peasant farmers and even to resume possession of lands leased in the sugar estates to workers for “provisions” and rice farming. And drainage and irrigation schemes (the East Coast Water Conservancy, the Bonasika Irrigation Scheme and Torani Canal) were carried out for their sole benefit.
Land reform and water control in the circumstances became the main platform of the PPP against the colonialists and their supporters.
In the later 1940’s and early 1950’s, it intensified its campaign for the release of 88,873 acres held by the sugar estates under D.H.M.P. (During Her Majesty’s Pleasure) leases at pepper corn rentals of about 5 cents per acre.
The first PPP government (1953) amended the Rice Farmers (Security of Tenure) Ordinance of 1945, and placed additional powers in the hands of the District Commissioner (D.C). If the landlord failed to observe the rules of good estate management (digging and maintaining drainage and irrigation canals), the D.C. could give him a specified time to undertake the works. If he refused to do so, the work could be done by the government at public expense and the cost recovered from the landlord.
The amendment also included the fixing of rentals for “new” rice lands.
Another decision of the PPP government was to refuse landlords, who owned first depths, automatic leases to second and third-depth lands.
But unlike Latin America, land was not the major problem. In pre- and post-independent Guyana, the great bulk of land is government owned.
The greatest bugbear is water control. Inadequate drainage and irrigation have exposed the farmers to loss from floods and droughts”.
Enter engineer Hutchinson: “In its fight for a comprehensive scheme of water control, the PPP was supported by the then Consulting Engineer to the Public Works Department, F.E. Hutchinson, who had come with a wealth of experience from India.
He severely criticized the ad hoc measures, such as the limited Bonasika Scheme on the West Coast of Demerara which was designed to help mainly the sugar estates. He recommended the scrapping of this scheme to include Boerasirie Extension Project, which he designed to include help for the farmers on the West Coast of Demerara and on the East Bank of Essequibo.
In the county of Berbice, he recommended, as he put it in one of his reports, “for the seventh time the scrapping of the Torani Canal” which was designed to bring water from the Berbice River into the Canje River to aid the sugar plantations on the lower Corentyne. He recommended, instead, the half-a-million acre Greater Canje Project.
He condemned the East Coast Water Conservancy with its high dam and limited storage capacity, and in its place advocated a comprehensive scheme from the Demerara and Berbice rivers embracing the Mahaica, Mahaicony and Abary rivers on two grounds. Firstly, being too near the coast, it inundated thousands of acres of fertile land. Secondly, being small in areas, the water level had to be kept high to store sufficient water for the sugar estates throughout the year. Thus, in times of heavy rainfall, great pressure is exerted on the “pegasse” earth dam, with resulting occasional ruptures as in 1934, 1950 and more recently in 1969 at Cane Grove. To release pressure on the dams, the Lama and Maduni Sluices on the Mahaica river are opened from time to time. This contributes to the flooding of the whole Mahaica-Mahaicony-Abary Area.
Hutchinson was opposed in principle to empoldering certain areas like Blocks I, II and III on the Corentyne which were undertaken by the Interim Government (1954-1957). These empolders only aggravated the flooding problems of the surrounding unempoldered areas.
He favoured the construction of huge conservancies or reservoirs. These would serve both for drainage and irrigation. At times of heavy rainfall, they would catch and store water in the backlands and prevent floodings of the front lands. In dry weather, irrigation water would be supplied from the reservoirs by gravity. Thus the age-old problem would be licked at one stroke – the flooding and expensive pumping out of water during the rainy season and the shortage of water in the dry season.
The conservancies would also be built further aback, about 25 miles from the coast as compared with the about 7 miles for the East Coast Conservancy. With a high birth rate, land availability was seen as the short-term solution to the growing unemployment problem.
The PPP popularized Hutchinson’s proposals and urged their immediate implementation. The problem of land hunger estimated a rate of unemployment of 18 per cent and underemployment of 9 per cent.
Hutchinson came in conflict with the sugar planters as they viewed the problem from different angles.
He saw the problem as a scientist and humanitarian. He argued that agriculture in the short-term would be the main thrust for development and a solution to the unemployment problem.”
PPP/PNC conflict: The colonial administration sided with the planters of the time. Frustrated, Mr Hutchinson left the country.
Dr Jagan’s other observations:
“The Interim government (1954) came under pressure for water control from the PPP after the suspension of the Constitution and the forceful removal of the PPP government; in late 1957, drainage and irrigation was given the highest priority.
From 1954 to 1964, were completed the Boerasirie Extension project, the Black Bush Scheme, and the Tapacuma Lake Scheme. The Land-of-Canaan sluice, unlike the Lama and Maduni sluices which discharged excess water into the Mahaica River, was built to release water from the East Coast Conservancy into the Demerara River.
The Pomeroon Follow-up and the Mahaica-Mahaicony Abary (MMA) projects would have been undertaken by the PPP government immediately after the Tapacuma had it not been removed by constitutional manipulation and fraud at the end of 1964 (the MMA projects was the first to be completely designed by Guyanese engineers; previous projects had been done by British consulting engineers, Halcrow and Partners).
A UN feasibility project was also started by the PPP government for the half-million acre Greater Canje Project.
The PNC regime downgraded drainage and irrigation despite its belated recognition of the importance of agriculture. Previously, the PPP government has been attacked as “rice Government” and “coolie government”, for emphasizing drainage and irrigation, and agriculture.
In the 1954-59 and 1960-64 Development Plans, 25% and 30% respectively were allocated for drainage and irrigation. Under the PNC 7 years (1966-72) D-plan, the allocation was sharply reduced to 13%, amounting to $40 million.
But only a small portion of the amount allocated was actually spent. No work was done either on the earthern dam from Mahaica or Abary, planned at $105 Million, or for the Canje Basin dam, pumps etc., planned at $24 million.
Failure by the PNC regime to carry out the Pomeroon Follow-up scheme and the dredging of the Pomeroon River at its mouth has resulted in severe flooding and ruin to thousands of farmers in one of the “bread-basket” areas.”
I’ve quoted Jagan at some length to show that he had given much personal thought to the vital question of Drainage and Irrigation and Flooding. Today’s engineers and experts, now with the benefit of hindsight, may point out flaws in Cheddi’s plans and projections. But to me if we had drainage and irrigation of the collective mind, a group of professionals drawn from all sectors and political persuasions should sit down to solve our national flooding problem.
But, as usual …
Until …
1) Africans were the first to plant rice in Guyana. They grew it on the sugar plantations before it became the diet of runaway slaves, along with ground vegetables.
2) The Timini Africans grew it in Berbice by 1848.
3) What is Chawal, Osikapa, Oryza Sativa?
4) From the media and the fields we can see: rice and sugar are facing severe challenges.
5) I agree that merely to foist any new Crime plan onto existing incompetence will fail. As the editorial writer wrote: “Only time will tell but there is a view that the grafting of this plan onto a structure compromised by corruption, poor performance and heavy-handed political control will not yield the desired results.”
“Til next week!
