Latest update April 7th, 2026 12:30 AM
Flood fears return
…commentators bemoan lack of planning, poor drainage
(Kaieteur News) – Social commentator are warning that Guyana may be drifting toward another major flood crisis, as current conditions increasingly mirror those that led to the devastating 2005 Guyana floods.
The Globespan show last Wednesday was moderated by businessman Nohar Singh and featuring guests – chartered accountant and lawyer Christopher Ram and former Editor-in-chief of Stabroek News Anand Persaud – raised the issue of infrastructural management and discussed some of its weaknesses.
The flooding in 2005, according to Persaud, was thought to be linked to the very poor maintenance of the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) so that intense flooding was experienced in Georgetown and the East Coast for several weeks during that period. “This underlines the importance of paying attention to key infrastructure. The drainage channels within the conservancy had become blocked, overgrown with weeds and the retention capacity for the EDWC was far less than when it was first incepted. So, if you don’t manage your infrastructure well, you are going to end up in this sort of problem,” he said. “And what has happened since then is the continued poor maintenance of infrastructure and you have a lot of dams and canals filled over that reduced the drainage capacity meant to be there,” he continued.
The flooding situation a few days ago.
Persaud said that in the capital city, over the past five or six years since oil was discovered, there has been a significant amount of construction, which has created greater problems with water flow. He added that to effectively address drainage issues, it is necessary to have experts in hydrology conduct water flow studies and determine where improvements are needed.
Singh reminded how $81B has been budgeted this year for drainage and irrigation, while Ram said that, in addition to major concrete works, waterways in the city have been narrowed due to the push for dual carriageways, leaving water with limited places to go. He also charged that the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA), which includes representatives from the Ministries of Finance, Agriculture, and Public Works, has not been properly constituted since 2023 and has not produced an annual report since 2018.
Ram added that despite receiving funding every year, there appears to be little accountability, with billions of dollars being allocated without proper oversight, which he described as part of a broader pattern of corruption in Guyana. Meanwhile, Acting Town Clerk Candace Nelson told Kaieteur News yesterday that from the Mayor and City Council’s end, they are trying to ensure that the sluices are opened on time. “All of the pumps are working. If there is any blockage anywhere, we have a team, once it’s reported to us, that would go and try to clear that blockage so the water can flow freely,” she shared. d weak oversight as key risks.
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