Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing is hop­ing the city will again ben­e­fit from the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) to clean un­der­ground drains. Last year, the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture and the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion came to­geth­er to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing woes in the city.

On Thurs­day, Lee Sing said now that PURE was back on stream, he was hop­ing for sim­i­lar as­sis­tance. He said: "Now that PURE is pure again, we are hop­ing we can get help." A con­trac­tor was hired to clean the drainage sys­tems last year. Lee Sing made an ap­peal to Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to al­so do its part by pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial re­sources.

He said the cor­po­ra­tion was do­ing its best with its lim­it­ed re­sources. Last year, the Gov­ern­ment blamed un­reg­u­lat­ed hill­side de­vel­op­ment for the hav­oc caused in ar­eas like Mar­aval, Long Cir­cu­lar, Dibe, and Diego Mar­tin. In about 40 days the hur­ri­cane sea­son will be­gin.

The cor­po­ra­tion al­so has a gul­ly suck­er to as­sist in the clean­ing of drains in the city. Lee Sing said as far as he was aware the gul­ly suck­er was op­er­a­tional. Warn­er, in a brief in­ter­view said he was in talks with Lee Sing and that the work will con­tin­ue this year. He said: "May­or Lee Sing and I are in agree­ment when it comes to that, and the work will con­tin­ue as of next week. We are in sync."