NDIA conducts draft assessment of El Nino conditions

Jan 16, 2016 News

– as irrigation water quality deteriorates
The National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) has announced that it is conducting a draft assessment of the El Nino conditions being experienced countrywide. Along coastal Guyana efforts are ongoing to pump water from the Maduni River into the Lama conservancy.
An NDIA official has stated that the East Coast Demerara Water Conservancy (ECDWC) is not so critical and that the structure is holding up. It is understood that the authority has also sent engineers to the Essequibo Coast in order to assess the situation.
The drop in the level of the conservancy has interrupted the critical irrigation process, and has forced some farmers, who can afford, to take on the responsibility of pumping water from the canals to their fields.
Sugrim Sarju, a rice farmer located at Grass Hook, Mahaica, noted that while water is being pumped into the ECDWC from Lama and Maduni River, the dry weather and the pumps have caused the water from Grass Hook to Baiabu to be extremely salty and muddy.
As a result, he stated that the situation is untenable for crop cultivation. Sarju also revealed that the pumping efforts have been ongoing for weeks. He said that some ways the government can help farmers, depending on the Mahaica River, for irrigation water would be to provide excavators that can clean the trenches.
General Secretary of the Guyana Rice Producers’ Association (GRPA), Dharamkumar Seeraj, recently confirmed that while there are demands for water during the current rice-planting season, the conservancy level is low.
As a consequence, he said, the conservancy has to be supplemented by farmers pumping water into their fields. According to Seeraj, this is a cost they will have to bear.
It is understood that while some farmers have taken on this additional cost, others are waiting in the hope that there will be rainfall.
“There is apprehension among the farmers,” Seeraj had said, describing the mood on the ground in Crane, on the West Coast of Demerara.
“Rice will be lost and cost will go up (because they are spending to pump water).”
One rice farmer situated in Anna Regina noted that the problem is also as widespread at Suddie, Essequibo to Charity.
He noted that at the moment farmers are forced to pump water into their fields to cultivate their crops or to sow. He stated that if they cannot get water throughout to the bearing stage, their crop will be lost.
It is understood that while a pumping station is currently under construction at Stewartville, the Dawa pumping station located at Tapacuma has not been functioning.
This pump usually pumps water from the Pomeroon River, to be discharged into the Tapacuma Lake, so that rice farmers can get water to irrigate their lands. In addition, the level in the main conservancy would be maintained until harvest.
The dreaded dry weather spell known as ‘El Niño’ has made a significant impact within the past few weeks. To address the issue, the Ministry of Agriculture had set up an El Niño task force October.
Minister of Agriculture, Noel Holder, had projected that the dry spell would last until the second quarter of 2016. The Minister had stated that there would be a “collaborative effort” to address the issue and that there would be briefings on the situation by the task force.

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NDIA conducts draft assessment of El Nino conditions

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