Dear Editor,
As a former rice farmer and rice extension officer I still hold strong to my view that if water had been pumped early from the Pomeroon river when there was an abundance of sweet water, many acres of rice could have been saved in Region Two. I have great regard for Mr Frederick Flatts, National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) head, who is an engineer and with whom I worked on the UNDP projects at the Anna Regina Town Council. Mr Flatts has experience of the Pomeroon, where I once took him to see the collapsed Charity wharf on his visit here to the Essequibo Coast.
The last time I saw him was at the cabinet outreach with Prime Minister and first Vice-President Moses Nagamootoo, but I never got the chance to talk to him, since he was busy answering questions from the floor. My main contention here is that no one from the NDIA and the Drainage and Irrigation department was monitoring the weather situation; they thought that the rain would fall in December as it always does. Lo and behold, it never came.
I think that the hydrometeorological department attached to the Ministry of Agriculture was also caught with their pants down; they should have alerted the country that there was an El Niño weather phenomenon in the making and that the indications were that there would be a recurrence of drought like weather conditions in Guyana. I would maintain that there was enough water in the Pomeroon river for the Autumn crop – May to June ‒ and the Spring crop –November to December 2015. Now it’s too late to pump water because the water is already salt in the Pomeroon.
During my tenure as a rice extension officer, all the rice-growing regions were affected by the long dry season effect of El Niño. Daramkumar Seeraj, General Secretary of the Guyana Rice Producer’s Association (GRPA) had all his extension officers along with Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) officers, every day in the fields and at the Dawa pumping station monitoring the water situation and the salt content. There was definitely a plan in those crucial periods to save the rice sown. The pump at Dawa was working 24/7 although it was limping, and mobile pumps were diverted to places like Manacurie to build the water level in the downstream areas. Only the extremely high rice lands were affected, and only a small acreage of rice was lost due to a lack of irrigation water.
The assessment of the affected acreages carried out in the June 1998 El Niño by the extension staff of GRDB and the field staff of the GRPA indicated that 74,000 acres had been affected. Some 24,000 acres which had been sown were lost owing to the water shortage, while 54,000 acres which had been cultivated could not be sown.
We were monitoring the fuel which was transported from the operation and maintenance compound to Dawa to see that there was no theft and that it reached its destination safely. This new coalition government and the Minister of Agriculture have to be more proactive. I am quite sure none of these officers and the minister has ever visited the Dawa pumping station after assuming office to see the conditions and state of the main source of irrigation water to the rice-growing areas of Region Two.
A more serious problem is now erupting in the Pomeroon because since the water has turned salt, there would be an outbreak of diseases like diarrhea. In addition, all the cash crops will go down the drain and life will become harder for those living in the Pomeroon. Something will have to happen urgently to assist them with drinking water. Weather forecasting has never been so crucial for Essequibo and Pomeroon farmers. Climate change means that they can no longer rely on the meteorological department and the signs that they used in the past to help them decide when to sow or harvest. Technology offers a solution, but with fewer stations, the weather monitoring network is many times weaker in Guyana than the minimum level recommended by the World Meteorological Organization.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
