THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is, again, appealing for citizens to ensure that surface drains in their yards are free from litter and are flowing at all times.
In a press statement, the municipality said Georgetown recently experienced 4.0 inches of rainfall which, together with high tide, kept the sluices closed.
As a result, there was overtopping in certain areas.

“The City Council wishes to apologise to those residents who were affected by that situation. However, the Council is reminding citizens that Georgetown is four feet below the normal high tide and an additional two feet below spring tide,” City Hall said.
As such, the Council said it is imperative that citizens cooperate to prevent garbage, including plastic bottles, styrofoam boxes and other non-biodegradable materials from entering  canals, drains and waterways.
Furthermore, M&CC reported that the City Engineer provided information to the effect that two of the municipality’s hydroflow pumps, at the Sussex Street and John Fernandes sluices, are not operable.
In addition, there have been two spates of power outages which the Council said affected its pumps at Kitty.
“We had, repeatedly, asked Guyana Power and Light to connect that facility to a second power line. This would have allowed that pump to continue functioning even when there are blackouts in that section of the city. The Council awaits the assistance of that company.
“Notwithstanding that engineers are working to correct the situation to permit optimum use of council’s drainage and to secure the integrity of drainage in the city of Georgetown.
“In the municipal estimates for 2012, the Council budgeted over $220M for drainage works in the city. More than $125M were expended from that amount to preserve and improve the drainage system of the capital,” the statement pointed out.