Cash crop, livestock farmers suffer losses in Region 6

Heavy rainfall countrywide

Residents of Jermaina and Mara, which are the last two villages on the East Bank of Berbice, Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) woke up on Thursday morning to find water in their kitchens and bedrooms.
The farming communities which are located 30 miles up the Berbice River are currently underwater, with farmlands inundated with up to four feet of water.
Chairman of the Citizens Group of Mara, Randolph Prass said the floodwaters started to rise a few days prior and now backyards, chicken pens, kitchens, and bedrooms are flooded. He said personally he has about 45 birds.
Prass noted that many homes are underwater.
“We are tired living in these primitive, bewildered, and subdued conditions. We will be very grateful if the regional or Government officials can do something for us immediately,” he told Guyana Times.
Local Government and Regional Development Minister Nigel Dharamlall, along with Region Six Chairman David Armogan, visited the community on Thursday evening.
Yvonne Prass, who lives a short distance away from Chairman Prass, said that continuous rainfall since Wednesday night has led to tremendous flooding.
“When we get up, the whole place flooded. My husband when he left to go out, the water was not so much, he left early,” she related.
When this publication visited Prass’s home there were several inches of water in her kitchen and living room.
Meanwhile, Jaimoon Lindie of Mara told this newspaper that she has already lost hundreds of meat birds and countless layers. Even her ducks are finding it difficult to cope.
“I had some ducks sitting and the water come and all the eggs float away and some small chickens that just hatch out, all of them dead,” she revealed.
Silognie Babmattie, who operates a shop at Jermaina, noted that it was the second time her shop has been flooded in its 25 years of existence. The previous instance was more than two decades ago.
“The water coming from the back pressing down all the time, when the rain finish the water keep on coming all the time. This morning when I woke up, I see the water till in the shop,” she explained.
The shop owner noted that her lone freezer was submerged in floodwater when she opened the shop on Thursday morning.
Another resident of that village, Jamir Mohammed, who cultivates citrus and bananas, said the trees are all underwater.
He said the community had approached the regional administration seeking to have the canal cleared ahead of the May-June rainy season and one of the engineers had visited the community and taken information.
Meanwhile, Regional Chairman Armogan who returned from the communities on Thursday night told this publication that two machines would be needed to clear the canal so as to get the water off the land and out of the buildings in the shortest possible time.