No details on $500M allocation for sea defence works

Aug 11, 2022 News

…Edghill acknowledges no urgent need for funds

By Davina Bagot

Kaieteur News – A total of $550 million has been added to the Ministry of Public Works Budget this year, to maintain existing sea defences along the country’s coast, however, the subject Minister is not too keen on disclosing which specific communities will benefit from the improved sea and river defence structures.

Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill during Wednesday’s press conference

On Wednesday, Edghill during a press conference was asked to state specifically where the sea defences would be upgraded or where new structures might be required. To this end he explained, “Sea defence is not just about structures, and I’ve dealt with this in the National Assembly on Monday; we have to maintain the structural integrity of our sea and river defences…across the country.”

He went on to note that the supplementary budget received by his Ministry will support ongoing work in Regions Two, Three, Four, Five and Six. Edghill said that the work to be done in Region Four will include infrastructure development both on the East Coast and East Bank of Demerara. The Minister did not say which specific villages could expect to see work.

Moreover, when he was pressed further to say whether the funds will address emergency sea defence works, Edghill made it clear that the situation was quite the opposite.

In fact he boasted that his Ministry had been doing extensive work to ensure no serious breach is developed. According to him, “We don’t have emergency projects in sea defences at this time.” He went on to explain, “An emergency project would be a project that you did not envisage and you did not cater for that happened; a breach or something of the sort. Thank God, with the interventions that have been made and the constant monitoring and the work that has been done in a proactive manner, we haven’t had breaches and that’s what we continue to do to ensure we don’t have to get into emergencies.”

In presenting this year’s Budget, the senior Minister with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh said that the Sea and River Defence arm of the Ministry was allocated a total of $5 billion to further strengthen Guyana’s flood protection infrastructure. According to the Budget Estimates, work was already scheduled to occur in Johanna Cecilia/Zorg in Region Two, and other villages on the East Bank and West Coast of Demerara.

Meanwhile, during Monday’s Sitting of the National Assembly that was boycotted by the Opposition, PPP Member of Parliament (MP), Sanjeev Datadin questioned the funds being sought. Edghill was asked to list the villages that would benefit from the improved sea defences and how it would benefit the citizens there. In response Edghill pointed to the importance of protecting farmers from the dangerous “saline water” and only listed the administrative regions that would see improvement, rather than outline the communities where work is expected to be done.

It must be noted that the Opposition Leader, Aubrey Norton during his weekly press briefing on Tuesday told the media that the $44.7 billion surplus approved in the National Assembly on Monday will aid in the continued corrupt practices of the incumbent People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) government.

Norton explained, “What we saw was the presentation of a request for finances, to continue to have a slush fund for the PPP’s corruption, handout and bribery of voters, and so we thought that we couldn’t be in that environment.”

He argued too that the supplemental budget did nothing to ease the cost of living crisis prevailing in the country.

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