Dear Editor,

MR TAKOOR Persaud, a fisherman with 50 years’ experience, who hails from Marias’ Lodge, Essequibo Coast, and his wife Selina Persaud migrated to Cotton Field, some 15 miles away, where they built their permanent home and now accommodate their son Sanjay Persaud.Selina worked with her husband on their boat, catching fishes. Day and night they toiled in the deep, and now they both have retired from this occupation, according to Mr Takoor Persaud. Their only son, Sanjay Persaud, and his only son, Jason, have taken over from their forebears, and have enlarged the seine.

After a trip in the Atlantic Ocean, Sanjay would drive his boat to the Anna Regina channel, where he would unload his catch. He told me that, for the past months, he cannot come in at the sluice because the drift mud has blocked up the channel for about 2 miles.

Both he and his father have said they have never seen this kind of situation in all their lives as fishermen.

Sanjay said he and his workmen have to push the boat, laden with the catch, on the drift mud towards the seawall at Anna Regina, where they would unload the catch. He said something has to be done urgently to remove the drift mud from the sluice and clear the channel by flushing it out with water. This, he said, can be done by placing a dredge over the sea wall with a dragline, where it can operate day and night to remove the slush. While the slush is being removed from in front of the koker door, water from living quarters and rice fields will keep running through the door and help to keep the channel clear at all times. Boats would get access to drive in the channel straight to the seawall, where fishermen can discharge their catch.

Takoor said the kokers were built by the Dutch in the late 19th century, when Essequibo had 36 grinding sugar estates that stretched from Walton Hall in the north to Spring Garden in the south.

Farming and fishing are the main income providers on the Essequibo Coast, neither of which can be conducted without proper drainage and irrigation and strong sea defence structures. There is therefore urgent need to flush out this drift mud, before onset of the rainy season brings flooding with its related inconveniences.
In the past, crops and livestock were lost because of this same situation.

The mangrove trees which were there have all disappeared, and erosion has started to take place. A levee system and jetties are needed to send sediment into the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean and prevent marshes from coming inwards towards the sea defence.
Yours sincerely,
MOHAMED KHAN