– planned and executed solution by City Council a ‘non-starter’

IN light of a City Council planned and executed solution being a “non-starter”, innovative thinking is needed to fix the defects being uncovered with the current drainage situation in Georgetown, Secretary to the Cabinet Dr Roger Luncheon told reporters yesterday.
Speaking at his weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at Office of the President in Georgetown, Dr Luncheon said the 84 mm of rainfall overnight represents another round of flooding that has induced despair among residents.
“Extremes in the weather patterns are now unavoidable, part of the reality of climate change. Not doing anything, however, about drainage is not unavoidable.
“The City Council and drainage is not a problem that is unknown to us and we have the more recent example of the multi-stakeholders’ interventions in the December 2013 rains that similarly affected the city.
“In Cabinet’s discussion, interventions along those lines pointed to an appropriate direction, a way forward. The situation, Cabinet felt, now calls for more aggressive thinking on the part of stakeholders. Cabinet’s contention is the time for action is now,” Luncheon stated.
“Innovative thinking” in Hope Canal
Luncheon also referred to the need for the Hope Canal to become operational, a project which he believes comes under the “innovative thinking” that he alluded to earlier.
Meanwhile, the $3.6B East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) Northern Relief Channel, well known as Hope Canal, has missed the scheduled December 31, 2013 deadline. The major reason is that the contractor implementing the eight-door sluice component of the project has completed just about 50 percent of the task so far.
Considering that the project is being built for the first time in Guyana, and will be a major engineering construction achievement done by Guyanese engineers and workers, the Ministry of Agriculture has extended the deadline of commissioning the project by two months. In addition, the ministry is working with the contractor to have more than 90 percent of the work completed in order to have the project become functional by February 14.

(By Telesha Ramnarine)