Minister of Labour, Joseph Hamilton on Sunday criticized the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) for its “negligence”, which he said has resulted in the flooding of several areas in South Georgetown.
But former Public Infrastructure Minister, David Patterson has taken umbrage at this criticism.
He said that his successor, the Public Works Minister, Bishop Juan Edghill has also criticised the M&CC.
Patterson is challenging the two Ministers to “provide proof of these mischievous claims as to the root cause of the flooding”.
“If not, they will be exposed once more as architects of deception,” he posited.
Patterson said that he was involved with the drainage of Georgetown from 2015 to 2020 and while there have been several reasons why the city floods during this period, it was never reported or discovered that the root cause was due to sleeping pump attendants.
“I repeat, during this period, in Georgetown flooding was never attributed to pump attendants sleeping. In 2015, mere days after the Coalition assumed office, the country was drenched with rainfall, of even more intensity than our current patterns. An assessment of our drainage infrastructure discovered that: of the 13 sluices that drained Georgetown, only 4 were operable; of the 7 pumps, only 2 were functioning; none of the outfalls were dredged in years; private businesses had paved over several important waterways. In fact, 2 sluices were actually controlled by private businesses, hence we had to seek permission from the owners to even access these structures. Our entire drainage network had collapsed causing sections of our city to flood and remain so for days.”
Patterson said that without even casting blame on any entity, “since our Capital City belongs to all Guyanese”, his APNU+AFC government set about repairing and upgrading all the sluices, repairing, or replacing all the pumps, and dredging all the waterways, thus bringing much-needed relief to the city.
“Within a year, not only was the city cleaner, air fresher but our drainage network was able to effectively drain as much as 2.5 inches of rainfall in a single day,” he noted.
Patterson said that the improved drainage was not only achieved by physical infrastructure work but also a reporting system was established, whereby engineers who resided near a sluice or pumping station were tasked with ensuring that the facility was operable whenever required.
“Not only was the government and city council involved, but there also existed an informal group of ‘inspectors’. That’s right so that any fault or downtime was immediately reported to the ministry via our contact numbers or social media, causing teams to be dispatched immediately. It was important to note that during this period, there was no separation of responsibilities between government and local authorities since it was well established that all local authorities required government assistance with respect to drainage. As such, politics was set aside and assistance was granted whenever needed, irrespective of which political party controlled the local authority,” the former Minister stressed.
He added, “Edghill and company, have disbanded the reporting network, redrawn the demarcation between government and local authorities knowing fully well that these entities are incapable of handling this task on their own, especially since they cannot collect the revenue that they are owed. Further, Edghill and company have even sunk so low, that they are now blaming pump attendants. Most worrying is the reintroduction of politics into our drainage network.”
