Govt. continues to reduce the MMA farmers to beggars

Jan 07, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
As our country again reel under massive floodings, I wish to specifically address the situation in the Mahaica and Mahaicony Rivers and to express my opinion that the fate of the hardy inhabitants of this productive region is now been permanently sealed.
Even if the government spends more billions of dollars, as it claimed to have done in the immediate past, on the so-called improvement of draining the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC), it will not suffice and the Mahaicony and Mahaica Rivers, and even the Abary River, will always be inundated at times when the rainfall is above normal.
Political rhetoric and corruption have overshadowed and outdone the will and commitment to genuinely help the people of these areas. One can clearly remember the G$500 million contract which was awarded a local firm a few short years ago to strengthen the dam along the EDWC. The project ended with a weaker and more vulnerable dam. The company continues to receive mega-dollar contracts. No one has been brought to book.
It must be noted here that the Demerara Coast is sandwiched between the Atlantic to the north and the EDWC to the south. The EDWC spans an area of approximately 100 square mile – 3/4 the size of the Gaza Strip of 139 square miles.  The EDWC Dam is presently in a most precarious position and with ‘La Nina’ looming on the horizon, and to be dutifully followed by the May/June rains, I have great doubts in the capacity of the powers that be to prevent the breaching of the dam and the widespread flooding of the entire East Demerara and nearby villages in West Berbice.
With every rainy season, more of our hardworking agricultural producers are dragged under poverty, thanks to a government which claims it cares.
We have been inundated in the past with news about how many millions of dollars have been spent to improve drainage (and in some cases, irrigation) of specific areas within the agricultural belt, but all these are reduced to zero once these rains come.
If indeed the humongous sums have been spent in bettering the drainage system, why is it not working?
The answer is very simple:  the money was expended and a few became richer. Some in authority have rightly earned nicknames such as “Mr. Ten Percent” and “Mr. Twenty Percent.”
The Minister of Agriculture often has the effrontery to go and meet with the farmers and express his sympathy at their plight and outline to them the additional programmes which the government will undertake to improve their communities. There is always no shortage when it comes to the amount of money this ‘caring’ administration will spend to ensure there is no flooding during the next rainy season, if one is to believe the constant lies churned out by those in whose hands the fate of thousands of hardworking, decent citizens lie.
The time has come for the farming community to give the Minister and others the cold shoulder whenever he visits their areas. They should simply not attend any meetings with the government officials because they are an absolute waste of time.
The government, since 1992, has failed miserably in bettering the lot of the many farming communities, which have repeatedly been flooded over the years. Probably, if the ethnicity of the farmers was different we would have seen real progress with the drainage of those communities.
For the farmers in the flood-prone areas, there is no end in sight. The political rhetoric will continue to play in their ears as general election approaches.
The farmers will be promised all kinds of programmes and assistance to make them better but at the end of the day, they are going to be worse off than the previous rainy season. Remember, we are in the era of Global Warming (or Global Cooling?) and such things as flooding are just going to get worse.
Small wonder the Rice Producers’ Association (RPA) bereft of any kind of intelligent leadership and academic capacity cannot really represent the few farmers in its membership.
The RPA has been used as a mobilization and organisational tool to get farmers to vote for the present regime at every general election. It is an organisation which was used as a tool against the PNC when it governed.
It is a political organisation which has done absolutely nothing for the farmers.
It would be most interesting if the RPA can tell us of its achievements since 1992 and how these achievements have positively impacted on the farmers and, by extension, the country.
The RPA should also let us know why it has so zealously supported the overcapitalization and over re-tooling of the rice industry, by several private farmers, at a time, even without the present massive flooding in the rice districts, when the rice industry will record negative growth as a result of the continuing massive slump in world rice prices and massive increases in the cost of inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. The visionless leadership in the RPA comes about because it is deprived of basic intelligence and commonsense.
The farmers are better off without such an organisation which cannot provide them basic representation and leadership.
The time may have arrived when the farmers in Mahaica, Abary and Mahaicony Rivers should file a Class Action suit against the government for continuously flooding them out, destroying their crops and livestock and reducing them to beggars – year in, year out. I think they have a winnable case.
Lall Kumar Ramsingh

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