Farmers in the Mahaica and Mahaicony areas are preparing for enormous losses as they desperately seek to preserve limited water stores, which they say are being selfishly siphoned off.
“We got to sleep and watchman ’cause people ah pump the water in the night. Only now them man step in and they got to ease. They got to let the water full the system back now,” rice farmer Susankar (only name given) told Stabroek News yesterday.
As dry weather persists throughout the country, some farmers in the areas had resorted to blocking several canals in order to secure water for their own lands. As a result, the Mahaica-Mahaicony-Abary Agricultural Development Authority (MMA/ADA) had started to monitor and regulate the use of water.
However, despite multiple warnings, the farmers closer the source of the water are still pumping water for their own use and ignoring the other farmers, who are dreading enormous losses.
Susankar explained that in a bid to stop the other farmers from pumping water from the already empty canals, a team of farmers would have to patrol the Mahaica farmlands. “At the back here, about 40 of us are here until day clean this morning. This place does be busier than Sheriff Street ’cause [we] ain’t want nobody pump water and leave the well dry,” he said, while noting that they
