MMA-ADA threatens court action against Region 5 farmers over unpaid charges

The Mahaica Mahaicony Abary-Agricultural Development Authority (MMA-ADA) is now threatening to take legal action against scores of farmers within Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), who utilise drainage and irrigation services but fail to pay required charges for same, as agreed.

This intention was disclosed by General Manager of the MMA-ADA, Aubrey Charles on the sidelines of a signing ceremony between the Authority and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) on Tuesday.
The General Manager, whilst engaging the media on the challenges faced by his entity pointed out that rice farmers within the Mahaica-Berbice region have adopted a habitual behaviour of not paying service charges on time. He added that farmers presently owe in excess of $1 billion for irrigation and drainage services.
“Farmers are required to pay charges for the management and maintenance of all drainage and irrigation works. One of the big challenge that we face currently is farmers are not paying their rates in a timely manner. Matter of fact, farmers currently owes the MMA in excess of one billion dollars and that is causing a big strain on the Authority [to] maintain all the drains, canal structures with the limited resources that are available at our disposal,” Charles stated.
The MMA-ADA official further explained that a number of farmers have recently begun expressing worries over the rapidly deteriorating state of main roadways into rice lands. But according to him, the roads cannot be fixed without monies being spent. Nevertheless, Charles made mention of the Authority’s efforts to rehabilitate the roadways given that the farmers account for over 45 per cent of the country’s overall rice production.
“A group of farmers came and they met with me, and they were pointing out the deterioration of the road network. I had to inform them that the maintenance of all the drainage and irrigation as well as the roads, it cost about fourteen million dollars per month and the farmers are not paying, they’re way behind the fourteen million which it cost to operate and maintain the system….So, on one hand, the MMA is trying its best so as to make the roads accessible and on the other hand, we appeal to farmers to pay their charge,” he explained.
On this note, the General Manager underscored that the MMA-ADA will take legal action against the farmers to have them pay in full the outstanding monies owed to the entity. This, however, is the Authority’s last choice but will be resorted to if the monetary figures keep increasing
“Of course yes, that option is last resort and we have been appealing to farmers, we’ve wrote them letters and as we speak, we have a list which we are fine-tuning it and those persons whose name appear on that list will be taken to court so that we can have our monies to run the system.”