City Engineer Colvern Venturn has given the assurance that City Hall is prepared to handle any potential flooding in Georgetown as the rainy season approaches.
Guyana is expected to experience unusually high amounts of rainfall until February 2022. Venture, during an interview with the News Room on Thursday, stated that the City Council is working closely with the government and the Civil Defence Commission.
“We are prepared to deal with flooding, of course, we have to look at the intensity of the rain and if there is a certain amount of inches of rainfall we will expect flooding in the city,” Venture said.
According to Venture, the City Council is collaborating with the Ministries of Agriculture and Public Works to ensure all drainage and pumps are functioning properly.
“We are working to ensure that the waterways are clear leading to the canals so that we could have those water quickly receded from the land and all of our pumps are in operation and we also have monitoring systems in place,” Venture explained.
The city engineer, however, noted that flooding is not something the council can avoid and urged persons to properly dispose of their household and commercial waste. This he explained would greatly reduce the severity of flooding in the city.
“There is evidence as you drive around the city, persons are not disposing of their garbage in the proper manner and as such those are getting into the waterways, thus resulting in a lot of clogs in drains and sometimes it takes a very long time for us to address some of these issues as a result of those clogs,” the engineer said.
He noted that citizens also need to take into consideration the health and safety of workers who will have to clean the drains.
According to the seasonal climate outlook released by the Hydrometeorological Office for December 2021 to February 2022, there is a high chance for wetter than usual conditions across all regions.
The Civil Defence Commission’s Director-General Lieutenant Colonel Kester Craig, at a recent forum, emphasised that planning for the immediate and distant future of disaster risk management in Guyana is of paramount importance.
