By Clifford Stanley

SECURITY guards attached to the GuySuCo Corentyne operations on Sunday night intercepted a truck loaded with five-gallon containers filled with diesel in the backlands of the Canje River in Region 6 (East Berbice/Corentyne).

The diesel has since been confirmed as fuel sent by the Regional Democratic Council of Region 6 to the pump at Black Bush Polder to be used to pump irrigation water into the cultivation plots of rice farmers in the area.

The fuel had been delivered to the Pumping Station and had been received by workers there about a week ago.
The vehicle fetching the suspected stolen diesel has been impounded, and two men are in police custody assisting with the investigations.

This bust has confirmed persistent reports in recent weeks that diesel sent to the pumping stations by the RDC in recent weeks was being stolen in large quantities.

Yesterday, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister in Region 6, Gobin Harbhajan, highlighted an additional bit of skullduggery in the Corentyne backlands when he disclosed that unknown persons had blocked the siphon near the Manarbisi Pump Station with two old boats and several vehicle tyres, to prevent the flow of water to plots in the area. This discovery was made by members of the Water Users Association for the villages from # 52 to # 74 Corentyne, two days ago.

Harbhajan said: “I have been saying this all along. This is sabotage, and it is politically motivated. Some people will be happy for the crop to fail, and they are pursuing this agenda with this type of sabotage.”

Regional Executive Officer of Region 6, Dr Veerasammy Ramayya, said he was hoping that the police investigation the suspected stolen diesel would get to the bottom of the matter, since the RDC had sent over $35M in diesel to the area over the past two weeks.

“We sent a barge with $30M worth of fuel. Then we sent additional barrels with fuel costing another $4M. We sent this fuel, and this fuel was enough to pump irrigation water to these lands for the rest of the crop. If this sort of thing is going on, it is just a matter of time before someone comes again to the Region to ask for more fuel. That will be another matter,” he added.

He also disclosed that operators at the Manarabisi pump had used up three forty-five-gallon drums of lubricants in just as many days.
When queried, they said that the fuel had leaked out from broken lines. He said this matter was currently being investigated.

Members of the Water Users Association, where the siphon had been blocked off, said they had built a bypass so that the water could flow. They said they had employed a full-time security guard to monitor the area.

An official of the # 52 to 74 WUA said yesterday, “This is sabotage”. He vowed that the WUA would work hard to ensure that no rice farmer loses his/her crop because of shortage of water.

Harbhajan has called on all members of the three WUAs in the Corentyne to be vigilant.