-Agri. Minister assures as May/June rains begin
-engineers monitoring pump stations on 24-hour basis
THE beginning of the May-June rainy season has seen the mobilisation of engineers to monitor pump stations and other major irrigation infrastructure across Georgetown.

This is according to Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha, who, on the sidelines of an event, told reporters that all city pumps are operable.
“[In] Georgetown, we have all the pumps operable; I have asked three engineers to monitor the situation… I have instructed that all the outfall channels be desilted. You know we had a long dry spell and, because there was not enough water in the system, these outfalls silted up; now we have started to clear out these outfalls and I am hoping that we can finish it early,” Mustapha said on Wednesday.

The collaboration between the Agriculture Ministry and the Ministry of Public Works includes the clearing of irrigation channels that might be obstructed due to ongoing road works.
While engineers are monitoring the pump systems on a 24-hour basis, pump and sluice operators have been on high alert.

“Generally, we have been looking at our system; all the pumps are now in order. We have moved pumps when we had the dry weather to do irrigation; now those pumps are moving back to the drainage canals.” Mustapha added.
In a previous report, Mustapha had disclosed that, before the end of the year, several Cusec mobile pumps will be installed in villages across the country.

Cusec mobile pumps are used for drainage and irrigation purposes to manage water levels in agricultural areas and prevent flooding.
“In Guyana [and] this part of the world, we are the most disaster-prone area…when you have drought, you have extreme drought like what we are encountering now and when you have rainfall, you have extreme rainfall where places are flooded out which we have suffered in 2021, so we have to be prepared for both.”

On Wednesday, Guyana’s Hydrometeorological Service reported partly cloudy to cloudy skies with occasional to frequent showers and thundershowers, over regions one to four and brief passing showers in other regions.
The estimation of rainfall between 15.0 mm and 30.0 mm was observed in regions one to four, and south regions six and nine.
According to Mustapha’s observations, the current rainfall is not expected to cause significant flooding.
“We are not having the kind of rainfall that can flood us and I am hoping that it can keep at this stage until we have all the system in place.”