THE National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) will be assuming responsibility of drainage duties that were once under the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo).

This move is expected to significantly reduce the load of unrelated tasks on the loss-making entity, while improving the nation’s capacity to quickly remove water from the land after heavy rainfall, and in some cases, prevent flooding where possible.

Agriculture Minister, Noel Holder, during an outreach to flood affected residents and farmers in the East Berbice region told farmers that they would soon have some amount of relief in relation to flooding as GuySuCo will no longer have the responsibility for drainage in their community.

GuySuCo is burdened with the number of extraneous things that should not be the company’s responsibility, Holder said. He said that included drainage and irrigation in residential areas.

The minister noted that the NDIA will now take responsibility for the communities because they have more pumps, facilities and engineers that can better cater to the issue of flooding.

He said NDIA is the agency dedicated to this feature so they will be taking over the matter of ensuring pumps are strategically placed and in working order.

“So I think you are going to see over the next year or so an improvement, because GuySuCo will no longer be burdened with that kind of concern. Their job is to produce sugar economically, not to drain water,” the minister insisted.

Holder told residents that GuySuCo has billions of dollars in assets to maintain, while trying to produce sugar at a profit and keeping its extraordinary commitments to residents.

At the Skeldon Estate alone, the minister pointed out, GuySuCo caters for 20,000 acres of drained and irrigated land, which include 217 miles of drainage canals, 750 miles of navigation and irrigation canals, 190 miles of access lands, 80 bridges, 21 aqueducts and 3847 drainage tubes.

This massive infrastructure is expensive to maintain, the Minister Holder noted.
“If you did nothing, if you don’t plant a single acre of cane, just to maintain that massive infrastructure in this area, will cost Skeldon $400million.”

He continued that apart from having to maintain structures such as the one described at Skeldon, the world market sugar price had declined tremendously over the years and the commodity is not very profitable, especially when Guyana is producing sugar at a national average of 38 cents per pound and the world market price is 15cents.

Also, while the national average cost to produce sugar is 38 cents, it costs the refurbished multi-billion dollar Skeldon factory 60 cents per pound to produce sugar.

With occurrences such as those and others taking place in the company, Holder said the nation cannot continue to hold GuySuCo with their massive infrastructure, loss-making production and extraneous responsibilities.

Hosted by the representative of the Prime Minister’s Berbice office, Gobin Harbhajan, Minister Holder, his NDIA team, GuySuCo, Guyana Rice Development Board team, among others, also visited the Region Six location of Fyrish Wednesday. It was noted that three important GuySuCo pumps were down and efforts were being main to rectify the problem.

Deonarine Arjune, one of the largest poultry farmers in the country, urged relief from the constant flooding during heavy rains and high tide.

The farmer plucks and packages some 60,000 birds a week and employs close to 400 persons. His farm land is heavily inundated. He said that because of GuySuCo’s failure to get off the flood water on their estate, it breached the dams that separate the community.

Excess rainfall and swelling of the Canje Creek compounded the situation.