Region Five farmers benefit from Govt’s flood relief grants

Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Nigel Dharamlall, MP, traveled to Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), to spearhead the disbursement of flood relief grants to farmers in the Blairmont and Ithaca communities.

Farmers were severely affected by record levels of rainfall, which decimated crops and livestock across the country.

Minister Dharamlall said the Government recognises the struggles farmers were dealing with in the past few months, noting that the last time Guyana experienced such heavy rainfall was 1981.

He said the Government’s first assessment of the damage caused by the flood found that some 52,000 households were affected.

“The only area that was spared was the East Coast and the East Bank and this was because of the mitigation canal that was constructed many years ago when Dr. Jagdeo was president, that is the Hope Canal.”

The minister said the PPP\C administration will be making major investments in the agriculture sector.

“We are going to do some additional canals that will move water from south to north and into the Berbice River and in some cases the Atlantic Ocean, so that we don’t have this problem that we would have had recently and as we would have had quite a number of times over the past few years.” Over $7 million in flood relief grants were disbursed to cash crop, livestock and rice farmers in the in the region. In excess of $1 billion will be distributed across the region as part Government’s relief programme.