Dear Editor,
With regards to your front page news coverage, Corentyne farmers, businesses and home owners are under severe pressure from this severe bout of flooding. Billions of dollars in investments, businesses, cash crops, rice, animals as well as various stocks would be lost. It is or should have been avoidable. Responsible individuals must be held accountable for this disaster. The people of the region are very angry. Some have taken to the streets because they know the flooding could have been avoided if the Ministries had done the right thing. They know what went wrong. They are not easily fooled. It is not just excessive rain that led to the flooding. It is also man-made. There was not effective planning and mitigation efforts to counter expected heavy rain. People speak openly against the government. Serious questions are being asked of what potentially led to this disaster and rightly so in order to hold people accountable for their poor decision making or is it greed.
Did cultivation of Kokerite Savannah, a vast expanse at the large backdam, play any role in the flooding? It used to serve as an empolder to hold water during periods of heavy rainfall. Permission was given to selected farmers to grow cash crops, thus removing this area as a reservoir to store water in case of the waterways overflowing their banks. When the scheme was designed, Kokerite Savannah was intentionally left as a buffer zone to collect water to ameliorate flooding in other areas and to be used for cattle farming. Cattle farmers have been displaced by cash crop farmers. The new farmers invested money to ready Kokerite Savanah for farming for which it was never designed. Cash crop farmers cut the dam and put tubes so they can drain the land and grow cash crops. Didn’t that lead to the flooding of the entire region? Huge amounts of water got dumped from the Kokerite Savannah into the drainage system and the system couldn’t handle it. It was poorly thought out get rich quick scheme that failed. Thus, the entire area became flooded and everyone has been affected.
Wasn’t Kokerite Savannah supposed to remain uncultivated to store water and avoid overloading of drainage system of the scheme? Who gave permission to farm there and why? It is a situation of greed and selfishness. Who will be held responsible? This situation creates the ideal grounds for emergency contracts to cronies at exorbitant costs. In addition to water being dumped into the main scheme from Kokerite Savannah, regular maintenance of drainage was not carried out on the Corentyne.
Contracts were withheld at NDIA from traditional contractors that would have provided routine maintenance work in preparation for the incoming rainfall season. In light of the above, does it not warrant a review of leadership?
Sincerely,
(Name and address supplied)
