Slothful Govt response affecting Corentyne rice farmers

More than 1500 acres of rice in under threat from lack of water in the 52-74 area in the Corentyne, Region Six (East

The head table at Thursday’s meeting (left-right) Chairman of the 52-74 IMC Rishieram Motie, Regional Chairman David Armogan, Waters Users Association Chairman Arjune Poonai, Regional Vice Chairman Dennis DeRoop and Regional Engineer Rupesh Persaud

Berbice-Corentyne).
The farmers are calling on Government to act swiftly and have a pump installed so that they can have access to some much needed water for their rice fields.
More than two dozen farmers met with regional officials and members of the Waters Users Association on Thursday afternoon at the Tagore Memorial Secondary School with the hope of addressing the issue.
“They spending time on sending home people and investigating this and that and not paying any attention to we the farmers,” one of the farmers told the meeting which was chaired by Regional Chairman David Armogan and included Regional Vice Chairman Dennis DeRoop, Chairman of the Waters Users Association Arjune Poonai, Regional Engineer Rupesh Persaud and Chairman of the 52-72 Interim Management Committee (IMC) Rishieram Motie.
According to one farmer, the water in his field dried up on Thursday and the next two days are critical for his rice crop. Other farmers are facing a similar dilemma. About 14,000 acres of rice are being cultivated in the 52-74 area.
Guyana Times understands that the pump which supplies those farmers has been out of operation for three months.
The Region Six administration has written to the Agriculture Ministry seeking its intervention for funding to repair the pump.
Regional Chairman David Armogan says it is unfortunate that all he has received to date from the Ministry is a letter of acknowledgement. “It has a lot to do with slowness and I am not satisfied that we are getting the kind of quick response that we want with this new Administration. We used to get quicker response with the previous Administration. I don’t know if it is because we have new Ministers in the Ministries; a lot of them don’t seem to have their footing on the ground as yet and by the time they get their footing, farmers could be suffering,” the Chairman told Guyana Times.
Meanwhile, there is another urgent matter which the farmers would like to engage the attention of the Agriculture Ministry.  This publication was told that most of the dams leading to farmlands in the 52-74 area have been destroyed during the rainy weather.
Armogan told this publication that representation has been made to the Ministry for funding to repair the access dams. “I don’t know if funding will be released to do these dams… We will have to get this process moving otherwise we will run into serious trouble in terms of getting farmers to get their paddy out of the field,” he said.
Farmers are now forced to sit and wait to see if it will rain to save the crop or if the Ministry will come to their rescue.