All of the extra rooms in the Catholic Life Center and Cathedral Presbytery were occupied by parishioners who were displaced during last week by some of the worse floods to hit that country in living memory.

Other families responded positively to requests from parish priest Fr John Persaud to provide shelter for those parishioners who were similarly affected. Meanwhile the staff at the Cathedral soup kitchen have taken on the task of providing meals for two of the old people's homes in Georgetown .

This is one small way in which the Church in Guyana has been playing its part to help bring relief to thousands of Guyanese all along the country's coastline who have been affected by the unusual weather phenomenon.

On Tuesday evening (Jan 25) Bishop Alleyne was due to meet with priests and parishioners from Georgetown, the East and West coast parishes which were the ones most severely affected by the floods. They will try to get a better picture of what is happening and of how the Catholic Church can respond to the situation.

Vicar General John Persaud told the Catholic Standard that he noted that a number of local and international organisations have responded admirably to the immediate crisis. He feels the Church should look to becoming involved for the longer term when people have to reconstruct their homes and lives.

The average rainfall for January is seven inches but up to last Wednesday a massive 37 inches of rain had already been dumped on the country with the rains falling almost incessantly for several days last week before a welcomed improvement in the weather, which came this week.

Flooding in East Coast Demerara

While there has been above average rainfall some engineers have pointed out that gross neglect of the drainage system in many parts of the country has aggravated the flood situation. Guyana is divided into eight administrative regions and three of those regions have been declared disaster areas.

Schools and most commercial operations, the courts, some banks and a number of government ministries and agencies have all been badly affected with some of them remaining closed all last week.

Flood waters rose as much as four feet high in some areas forcing thousands of persons to seek refuge in schools which were converted into temporary shelters. The government has been distributing 20,000 hot meals each day to those affected by the floods and a number of private organisations have also been distributing meals and dry rations.

Schools in Georgetown were due to reopen on Wednesday 26 but this had to be put back after an inspection by education officials on Tuesday found many schools still water-logged and others so badly damaged by the floods that clean up operations would now be expected to take much longer.

The flood relief effort has also triggered some previously unimaginable co-operation between various stakeholders in the country that religious leaders, NGOs, the diplomatic community and the political opposition were all working together in a spirit of co-operation.

Brazil was the first country to send relief supplies. Since then however aid has been coming from the Caribbean , the United Kingdom , the European Union and further afield.

Many of those affected by the current floods in Guyana had gotten into debts of various sizes particularly over the Christmas holidays. But President Bharrat Jagdeo says following representations made by members of the private sector he will be discussing the possibility of a moratorium on those debts with banks, companies and other establishments. One of his main concerns at present however is preventing the spread of diseases after the flood waters recede.