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Muslims pray for rain
Muslims across Guyana early yesterday morning prayed for rain as the dry weather continues to batter the country’s main export crops of rice and sugar and cause food shortages in the hinterland where the indigenous people live.
A section of the gathering of Muslims who prayed for rain yesterday.
“The Amerindian communities are really badly hit. We have been supplying food to some communities, but I need to increase that significantly,” President Bharrat Jagdeo said Friday.
The government is struggling to irrigate rice and sugar lands, with water conservancies which store water for use in the dry season now at their dead storage level. The authorities therefore have to make hard choices in deciding where to deploy pumps and what lands to water, whether rice, sugar or pasture grounds.
Jagdeo announced that an additional $600 million will go toward cutting canals so water can be drained from swamps and lakes into cultivation areas.
The Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana (CIOG), which represents Muslims in 145 mosques countrywide called out the Muslim Community to the congregational prayers for rain.
“This activity is consistent with the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.S) beseeching the creator to cause the rain to descend and alleviate sufferings as a result of the prolonged dry season,” said Shaykh Moeenul Hack, a leading executive of the CIOG.
The state-owned Guyana Sugar Corporation this week said cane growth and development has been affected at five of its eight estates. In addition, the Corporation said it has had to cut back on its replanting programme on four estates.
The Corporation said the full effects of the dry weather on sugar production for this year would not be fully known until the end of the second crop of 2010.
Because of the scarcity of water, for this rice crop, 58,762 hectares were sowed, 25 less than what was targeted.
In 2009, export earnings from sugar recorded a 10.2 percent decline to $119.8 million, while rice export earnings declined by 3.3 percent to $114.1 million.
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