Effective City Council management would have lessened flooding impact

Georgetown, GINA, November 27, 2013

 

President Donald Ramotar today expressed his profound concern for citizens and businesses located in Georgetown which have been severely displaced by flooding. The City experienced over five inches of rainfall over the last 12 hours, which placed a lot of pressure on the drainage system.

The Head of State said that even though that was a lot of rain for such a short period, the impact could have been significantly lessened had there been a better functioning City Council.

“The APNU manages the City; they are in control of the City as this point in time, and we have seen a lot of neglect,” the President lamented.

Over the last few years, the Government of Guyana has pumped in millions of dollars to bail out a heavily indebted City Council as a result of mismanagement of its resources.

At the moment, the Government, through the Ministries of Agriculture and Public Works, is doing all that it can to remove flood water from the land as quickly as possible.

The President posited that hopefully with the holding of the long-awaited local government elections, this situation will be resolved soon.

Heavy rainfall that flooded Region Four and parts of Regions Two and Three was attributed to a high pressure system over Bermuda which forced the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ICTZ) to shift from its last position, to about six degrees north of the equator, bringing it directly over Guyana’s Coast.

The rainfall recorded at the Botanical Gardens measured 128.9mm or 5.1 inches, the highest recorded in the City since 1892.