Residents of the No. 30 Village/ Trafalgar area in West Berbice are frustrated with the stagnant floodwater and are pleading with the government to release the $50M it would cost to fix two vital pumps.
The residents who have suffered losses to their livestock and are becoming sick, staged protest actions on Monday, blocking the road and demanding that they be compensated. Most of the residents in the area rear livestock for a living.
The residents said too that the Guyana Water Inc “disconnected the pipes and open the main and dirty water getting in.” This, they said, is causing everyone, especially the children to contract vomiting, diarrhoea and skin infections.
The residents lamented: “Let the government release the money now; they can’t wait until the dry weather come to release it… They have emergency funds that they can use. This is an emergency!”
They told Stabroek News (SN) yesterday that they were not looking for foodstuff but want monetary compensation, lamenting that government was not seeing the seriousness of their plight.
They promised: “If we don’t hear something tangible by weekend, we are going back on the road.”
The residents said the pumps at Trafalgar were vandalized about two years ago and that when the Minister of Communities, Ronald Bulkan visited in February they asked him “to do something but nothing was done. They [government] like to see fair play.”
They had also asked for the intervention of the Minister of Public Infra-structure, David Patterson and had taken reports to the Regional Democratic Council of Region 5.
According to them, “This is not about politics and about who look good. We can’t worry about who look good when we’re suffering.”
Two families, with children, that were living in flat houses have had to relocate to relatives’ home to escape the stagnant water in theirs.
