Latest update June 18th, 2025 12:42 AM
Latest News
- Guyana to help supply one-third of global oil output by 2030: IEA
- GuySuCo to start planting rice, cassava
- Israel kills at least 89 Palestinians in Gaza’s deadliest day at aid sites
- US oil majors dive into Brazil’s environmentally-sensitive area
- ExxonMobil commences drilling at Hamlet-1 and Lukanani-2 wells in Stabroek Block
Melanie Damishana farmers grieve over their losses
…Drainage pump runs out of fuel
Poultry and cash crop farmers are tallying their losses after the heavy rain that
swept the country over the weekend.
One poultry farmer, Sandra Blackman, of North Melanie Damishana, East Coast Demerara, said she lost six piglets in the flooding. “This is not the first time; if it wasn’t for this flooding I would have had 32 pigs but now I only have two. Every time the rain fall like this, something drastic always happens.”
Another resident, Hazel Brutus, who lost eight of her piglets on Sunday, said that she is upset since she makes her living from rearing pigs and now eight of them are dead. “I took them upstairs by me just to protect them but I had to bring them down back to be with their mother and they eventually died,” Brutus added.
Almost all of the residents in Melanie Damishana ‘slept in the water’ for the past few days, since the trench and their yards are ‘level’. “You cannot say where the trench end and where it start. Everything is in one.”
According to Blackman, to get to work she has to walk with her clothes and get ready on the road since her house is flooded.
When Kaieteur News visited Blackman’s house yesterday, her bed was just a few inches above the water.
The Kaieteur News reporter went three feet into the water to conduct an interview but was unable to speak with the other residents since the water was too deep.
Another resident, Terrence Layne, who is a pensioner, told this publication that he plants a “little kitchen garden to bring in a little income” but the flooding swept all his daily efforts away in a “blink”.
Layne, who is also an amputee, blames the pump since he said that the pump had stopped working for a few hours because it had “run out of fuel.”
The man said that if the pump had been working from Sunday last, straight through to yesterday, the damage would have been reduced.
“If they had two pumps then this wouldn’t have happened. They had two but I don’t know why they take one away,” Blackman added.
The yard and trench in one
This publication spoke to one of the pump attendants who said that the pump was out of fuel on Sunday night but that they received fuel on Monday and the pump was “back into action.”
According to a press release issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, the heavy rainfall should end today with little to moderate intermittent rainfall.
Some of the regions which experienced heavy flooding are regions 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
Does the mandate of the Ethnic Relations Commission extend to offensive but non-racial comments?
Kaieteur News – The Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) of Guyana was established under Article 212A of the Constitution... more
Antigua and Barbuda hosts the OAS at a crucial juncture for the Americas
By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News – The 55th Regular Session of the General Assembly of the Organisation of American... more
Weekend Cartoon
