The Guyana gov­ern­ment has an­nounced plans to em­bark up­on the largest in­vest­ment in drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion in the coun­try's his­to­ry as part of the Low Car­bon De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy (LCDS) 2030.

Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali, meet­ing with mem­bers of the LCDS Mul­ti-Stake­hold­er Steer­ing Com­mit­tee (MSSC) said the works will up­grade more than 1,500 kilo­me­tres of drainage canals, over 300 kok­ers, and 180 pumps na­tion­wide.

"This work will trans­form the coastal plains, pro­tect­ing more than 130 square kilo­me­tres of ur­ban land and 1,270 square kilo­me­tres of agri­cul­tur­al land", Pres­i­dent Ali said, adding "it will en­hance the re­silience of 320,000 peo­ple against more in­tense rain­storms and ris­ing sea lev­els".

Ali ex­plained that new high-lev­el re­lief canals, in­clud­ing the Hope-like sys­tems, are be­ing de­signed and built and that these canals will al­low wa­ter to drain even when tides are high, a crit­i­cal safe­guard for com­mu­ni­ties along the coast.

"These are re­al in­vest­ments, not just words, in our land, our peo­ple, and our fu­ture", he said, not­ing that the project is a key com­po­nent of the LCDS 2030, which is ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to every as­pect of Guyana's de­vel­op­ment agen­da.

"Every de­vel­op­ment plan we pur­sue has the LCDS and the ideals of the LCDS built in­to those plans", he said, out­lin­ing sev­er­al com­ple­men­tary in­vest­ments un­der the LCDS that are al­so trans­form­ing lives, in­clud­ing man­grove restora­tion, clean en­er­gy ex­pan­sion, and com­mu­ni­ty-led de­vel­op­ment projects.

"Our man­groves are a liv­ing shield, stor­ing car­bon, sup­port­ing fish­eries, and pro­tect­ing against the sea," Ali said, adding that, "over the past decade, Guyana has re­stored more than 140 hectares of man­groves and plant­ed over half a mil­lion seedlings, while in­vest­ing near­ly one bil­lion Guyana dol­lars since 2020 in their pro­tec­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion".

Ali has al­so float­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cov­er­ing a num­ber of drains for use as paid park­ing by se­lect­ed cat­e­gories of per­sons.

"In some of the main drainage ar­eas, we can de­sign cov­ered drains that cor­po­ra­tions, com­pa­nies who are now util­is­ing the para­pets can pay a fee and use for park­ing so we're look­ing at an en­tire ecosys­tem in a holis­tic way so that we can have op­ti­mal so­lu­tions," he said.

The George­town City Coun­cil's park­ing me­ter project was scrapped in 2017 and Ali said there would be a rapid as­sess­ment of all ex­ist­ing sur­veys and stud­ies aimed at craft­ing a drainage de­vel­op­ment plan and im­ple­men­ta­tion sched­ule.

"The city has out­grown the ca­pac­i­ty of those tun­nel sys­tems," he said, adding that the gov­ern­ment has in­for­ma­tion on the de­sign ca­pa­bil­i­ty and con­di­tion sur­vey of all drains, out­falls, and pump sta­tions.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Na­tion­al Drainage and Ir­ri­ga­tion Au­thor­i­ty, Li­onel Wordsworth said con­di­tion as­sess­ments of the 12 main canals, 12 main sluices and 14 pumps serv­ing the city had been al­ready com­plet­ed, while the Com­mis­sion­er of the Guyana Lands and Sur­veys Com­mis­sion, En­rique Mo­nize said it has ob­tained high-res­o­lu­tion im­ages and "we will be able to pro­duce dig­i­tal ter­rain mod­els, el­e­va­tion mod­els to as­sist this process."

Pres­i­dent Ali said the sewage sys­tem would be mod­ernised and would in­clude the con­struc­tion of a treat­ment plant. The raw sewage is dis­charged in­to the De­mer­ara Riv­er near the Coast Guard out­post.

Cur­rent­ly, the sewage sys­tem is over­flow­ing or seep­ing in­to a num­ber of ar­eas of George­town such as on Robb Street and around the Guyana Post Of­fice Cor­po­ra­tion head­quar­ters.

We are ask­ing dwellers of the City to co­op­er­ate with the team as they seek to im­ple­ment the first phase and that is clear­ing and clean­ing of the para­pets across the city," he said.