Dear Editor,
I have great respect for Region Two Regional Chairman Devanand Ramdatt, since we are friends and we worked together at the Guyana Rice Development Board. There is no doubt that he has a wealth of knowledge in the rice sector, particularly in Region Two where he was born and grew up. Mr Ramdatt came from a humble background and is the son of a downtrodden rice farmer.
I happened to come across his interview with Stabroek News, on Sunday, January 17, captioned ‘Large swathes of paddy in Regions Two, Five and Six face dry weather threat’. Some time ago I highlighted this same problem in Stabroek News, which is a consequence of a lackadaisical attitude and the poor management of the Drainage and Irrigation Department in Region Two. Normally sowing of the first crop for 2016 would start at the beginning of December 2015, but there was no irrigation water in the main conservancy canal to irrigate the 35,500 acres of ploughed rice lands.
The Regional Vice-Chairwoman should have given the go-ahead to start up the two Dawa pumps to pump water from the Pomeroon river since it could be seen that there was no water in the main canal and the lakes because of the prolonged dry spell. This matter should have been brought up at the statutory meeting of the RDC in November 2015, but it seems to me that no one was paying any attention to the crisis which is now facing the rice industry and the plight of the rice farmers. Some farmers having seen that the Drainage and Irrigation Department was doing nothing to pump water from Dawa to build up the water level in the main canal started to used their own mechanical pump, drawn by their tractors so it could flow into their irrigation canals to pump water into their fields. Those who couldn’t afford to hire a pump decided to wait on the rain to fall, but this never came in December 2015. The Vice-Chairwoman should have sent the department’s rangers with an HM Digital water testing instrument to see how far the salinity had reached in the Pomeroon river. But this never happened. Working with the Drainage and Irrigation Department in 1980 with overseers Baba Singh and Mr Pompey, this was part of my job. If salt water reaches Arapiaco in the Pomeroon, Dawa pump operators cannot pump water any more because the pumps will discharge salt water into the Tapakuma lake and into the irrigation conservancy canal.
Mr Ramdatt is also aware of this, which is the reason why he opted to keep the little fresh water in the canals to grow the crops which had already been sown so they reached the harvesting stage. This makes sense rather than having all the crops starved for water and dying out. He is the only Regional Chairman I have seen in the past 23 years going into the backdam and meeting with rice farmers and having a first-hand look at their problems. Farmers are still hoping that the rain will fall so they can cultivate their crops, as they have lost all confidence in the drainage and irrigation systems.
There will be a shortage of domestic rice on the local market and a loss of foreign exchange, because we will not be able to meet our overseas market demands if this situation continues. Government will have to put measures in place for local sales to consumers so there won’t be any shortages. The most affected areas in the rice-growing regions with this long dry spell are Leguan, Wakenaam, West Coast Demerara, Essequibo and Regions Five and Six. The new coalition government will have to put systems in place for future El Niños and prolonged dry spells.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
