MINISTER of Agriculture, Mr. Robert Persaud, has flayed the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) for making statements impugning the Government’s decision to finance the construction of the East Demerara Water Conservancy Northern Relief Channel.
Speaking yesterday at a sensitisation field day for the control of pesticides held at Little Biaboo, Mahaica, the Minister – in no uncertain terms – slammed the GHRA for being in their comfortable homes and not being able to experience what the people of Mahaica and Mahaicony go through every time there is a rainy season.
The GHRA, in a statement to the press, said that global warming needs national consultations, not a new canal. The body, in its statement, said the project presents formidable technical problems and is expensive and not the best solution. The GHRA called on the Government to discontinue the project until a flood mitigation strategy is developed.
Persaud said that when there is excess rainfall and erratic weather patterns, the people of the Mahaica and Mahaicony communities are especially vulnerable. He said  farmers of the communities sit on the front lines in terms of facing the effects of climate change.
The Minister said there have been ‘climate refugees’ from the areas of Joe Hook, Grass Hook and other communities, noting that these persons have had to find other places to live. “So you know what it is and what we have been doing over time,” he said.
Minister Persaud noted that many of the farmers would know of the work being done to raise the embankment and the other works aimed at making drainage and irrigation better.
But the Minister, pointing to the short term nature of those interventions, said they could lift the embankment and build additional sluices but these would not be adequate enough to deal with the wider risks that the community faces.
“And that is why it pains me, it pains our Government, it pains the President when we see people who claim to be concerned about human rights and people’s welfare…when they would have the audacity to say that we must not invest in better protecting you,” the minister lamented.
“What it tells me is that they are not concerned about your human rights, they are not concerned about your welfare. As far as they are concerned, you can be flooded out forever. They don’t care about the alleviation of your suffering. They live in their fancy houses in Georgetown…,” he posited.
The Minister said some of the critics of the canal look down on farmers. “They look down on people who perhaps do not belong to their upper class status,” he said.
The Agriculture Minister said the detractors’ criticism of the Relief Channel cannot be in the basis of it not being technically sound “because we had a consortium of local experts; we brought in experts from the United Kingdom, we had people who work with the World Bank and other agencies and we extended the technical review from six months to 14 months.” He said the technical assessments done went through all levels of scrutiny.
“So what they do now is say that it costs too much. I think the President put it well, because this is not money we are going to borrow. This is money that we are using [that came from] the people of Guyana, you the farmers, through your hard work, and we are investing that money back into your well being,” the Minister said. “For them, we should not be spending any money on you. For them we should let you continue to suffer,” he told the gathering.
“But we want them to know that we have justified [the building of the canal] and the consultants from the UK and from all the international agencies said this is a technically sound project. And we have looked at the least cost option while, at the same time, not compromising the technical specifics of that project. And what we came up with is that we will be able to execute and save as much as $600 million because the earthen works will be done by the Government itself,” he said.
He said it is not just a case of the project being technically sound as the only justification for the expenditure but they sat and looked at ways of saving money. He explained that in one year, what the farmers in the Mahaica/Mahaicony/Abary will lose due to flooding is what the Government is spending on the project.
Minister Persaud also pointed out that GHRA is treating the farmers and residents of the MMA communities as second class citizens and this must not be, since under the PPP Government, every citizen is a first class citizen. “When you suffer they don’t come out here,” he declared.