RESIDENTS of the Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, Ulverston and Alness villages on the Corentyne which have been under floodwaters for the past two weeks will get relief within the next two to three days.Regional  Executive Officer  of Region Six (East Berbice/Corentyne) Dr Veerasammy Ramayyah,  told the Guyana Chronicle that he had  expedited  the hiring of three excavators to desilt the badly clogged-up outfall channels.

“I learnt of the problem on Tuesday. I contacted three contractors yesterday and their machines are now at the locations carrying out the work which will bring relief to the area,” he said.

Rammayyah  made the comments  then  took time to complain that the chairman and the vice-chairman  of the  People’s  Progressive Party/ Civic-controlled region knew about the situation for the past two weeks, but had done nothing about it and had deliberately withheld that information from his office.

He charged that both  the Regional Chairman David Armogan and Regional Vice-Chairman Denis DeRoop who were approached and told,  had instead  opted to tell residents that he [Ramayyah] knew about  the situation but was too incompetent to do anything about it.”

“These are the kinds of lies that they have been telling people to make me look bad and to make the coalition look bad. But I learnt about it on Tuesday and the machines are there today within 24 hours, doing the work that is needed,” he said.

Ramayyah’s views echoed those of  Forbes Moore, Chairman of the Hogstye/ Lancaster Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC), who had said earlier this week that he had been totally dissatisfied with the response of Armogan and DeRoop  to the plight of the villages.

Moore said he first reported the  dire situation of the villages to DeRoop  about two weeks ago .

Instead of prompt action, DeRoop  took  pains to inform him  that the hiring of equipment to do the desilting would have to be done  after a process of invitation to tenders, a very lengthy process, and  nothing could be done before that  process was complete.

”I even spoke with  Armogan and he told me the same thing. What both men told me amounted to a whole lot of red tape. This was a case of Nero fiddling while Rome is burning,” he said.

He added that one after the other DeRoop and Armogan  placed the  responsibility for the crisis  at the doorstep of  Ramayyah  to the extent that he felt that it was a blame game going on.

“All this was  happening  while farmers’ rice crops and cash crops were  threatened and being destroyed by flood waters  in the villages.”

He said in desperation a delegation of affected villagers met with Gobin Harbhajan, Representative of the Prime Minister in Region Six on Monday and with his assistance and that of Ramayyah got positive results in three days.

Residents of Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, Ulverston and Alness had reported earlier this week that over 3,000 acres of rice and  cash crops   were currently  under floodwaters  due to the completely clogged-up  state of the outfall channels serving the villages.

“The rain fell for one day and one night last week and the drainage is  so poor, that  most of the agricultural  land, even land in the residential areas are still under water this Monday,”  one bemused and worried resident said.

The dysfunctional drainage  outlets    had been  identified as the  Alness Outfall  and the Liverpool /Manchester Outfall.

Expressing his gratitude to Harbhajan and Veerasammy yesterday, Moore said   he hoped that the outfalls, which had been neglected for years under the previous administration, would now  be cleaned on a regular basis to prevent  a recurrence of such flooding in the villages in the future.