Drying floor

Fishermen at Abram Zuil on the Essequibo Coast are peeved at two expensive structures that they say have now become white elephants.
The drying floor (for shrimp), above, along with a storeroom and shed culvert (on front page), that were constructed almost four years ago have never been put to proper use and are now effectively dormant.

The drying floor has at times been used by rice farmers to dry paddy at a cost of $20 per bag, and occasionally for its intended purpose, while the state of the storage building and its environs tells an indisputable story.
They were constructed at a cost of $11.7 million ($11,694,349.00 to be precise) and funded by the Government of Guyana (GOG), the Caribbean Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
When this newspaper visited the area recently and spoke with one fisherman who operated in that profession for almost three decades, he revealed that the relevant committee, the Unu Creek Fishermen Development Association, which comprises fifteen fishermen had lobbied for the Government to erect the structures, and it was a shame that they had been all but abandoned.

Thursday, September 03, 2009