RAIN OR NO RAIN

Feb 01, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

It does not matter how many investments were made in the past years on the drainage and irrigation systems in Guyana. As long as you have the incessant downpours that Guyana has been experiencing since last Friday, there will be serious flooding along the coastline.
Nothing can be done about that except wait for the waters to recede and hope that the rains do not continue. Even a brief one day respite from the rains should make a difference. But once there is rain again today the situation is not going to get better and Guyanese have to brace themselves for accumulation of water on the land.
This of course is nothing new. Guyana’s coastal villages acquired a reputation since colonial days of having its buildings mounted on stilts. This was because the coastland was flat and with little or no gradient, the waters tended to stay on the land after downpours and since most of the coastland is drained by gravity, and there is no appreciable decline in the land as it approaches the rivers and ocean, then gravity drainage is always going to be slow.
In this situation it will take time for water to recede over the land. This has how it has always been. Years ago, village shops used to be mounted on huge platforms and customers trying to get to some of these village shops had to climb up an inclined bridge.
The reason for these village shops mounted on platforms is not hard to imagine. It had to do with the fact that there was always flooding on the land after heavy downpours. However, the water quickly receded after the showers had stopped and within days things were back to normal.
Times have changed and people are no longer willing to accept that they should be living on top of floodwaters. They are not willing to accept that the land will take a few days to drain after about six inches of rainfall. In their estimation with a booming economy we should be able to drain six inches within the same day.
This is impossible considering our natural conditions and when you add the fact that most of the drains in the country are not in their best shape, and that people habitually litter and clog up the drainage system, then the situation gets worse.
Certainly things can get better, but it requires people to be more responsible and more importantly, to be able to pay their local authorities increased rates and taxes to improve their communities.
While in the case of Georgetown, the tired and discredited excuse is made that the government is starving the municipality of increased sources of revenue, the fact is that the very colonial authorities which we like to condemn created a garden city, and managed it well without the sort of resources that are now gleaned by the municipality.
A case can be made that the council is cash-strapped, and even if an IMC were to be imposed now on the city, something that the government should demand in its negotiations in parliament with the opposition over the national Budget, any new council would demand increased funding to fix the city.
The government, it is believed, recognizes the need for increased funding, but does not accept that new taxes need to be created. More importantly, it is certain that simply putting more money into the hands of an inefficient council will not be the answer to the woes of the city where the greatest number of citizens of the country reside.
As such, an IMC needs to be placed on the front-burner of the discussions between the government and the opposition. This should be for a fixed period of six months and should be a politically neutral IMC, in the sense that the persons chosen will not represent their parties, but would be citizens who are chosen for their technical merit.
If APNU, the AFC and the PPP/C cannot agree to an IMC for the city, then they had better call off the tripartite arrangements, because if the need for a new governance structure cannot be agreed upon, then the parties are wasting time believing that they can find consensus at the national level.
There is no need for the city to be so slushy after a few inches of rainfall. It was never like this, it should not be like this. It is time for a change, and time for the political parties to stop playing partisan politics and demonstrate that they can work together in the interest of the country, rain or no rain.

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