Kevon Felmine

Af­ter scores of Debe res­i­dents spent Christ­mas Day clean­ing their flood­ed homes, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan has in­struct­ed the com­pa­ny over­see­ing the $7.2 bil­lion Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion to de­ter­mine if the project was re­spon­si­ble.That came the day af­ter High­way Reroute Move­ment (HRM) leader Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh blamed Brazil­ian con­trac­tor, Con­stru­to­ra OAS, for block­ing the wa­ter­course which left sev­er­al ar­eas along the high­way un­der wa­ter.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan said the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nid­co) was on top of the mat­ter and he was await­ing the find­ings from its con­sul­tants."We have very com­pe­tent con­sul­tants on our jobs who will be giv­ing us their opin­ions on these mat­ters."I have asked Nid­co to tell me what is hap­pen­ing there and to get an opin­ion to me. I am on­to these mat­ters and we will take a look at all mat­ters raised by cit­i­zens be­cause we can­not ig­nore the voic­es of cit­i­zens," Ram­bachan said.

He de­clined to re­spond to the HRM's claim that work at the Debe in­ter­change caused the flood, say­ing he would re­frain from com­ment­ing on the high­way while Gov­ern­ment and the HRM were em­broiled in a court bat­tle over the high­way.He added: "Dr Kublals­ingh is en­ti­tled to his own opin­ions. Kublals­ingh's opin­ion is not the on­ly valid opin­ion. There are oth­er opin­ions that are valid and we are go­ing to be look­ing at all those opin­ions. What­ev­er ac­tion is ap­pro­pri­ate, such ac­tion will be tak­en.

"The Gov­ern­ment nev­er acts to the dis­favour of the cit­i­zens. The Gov­ern­ment al­ways acts in re­la­tion to sat­is­fy its clients and the main client is the cit­i­zens."When the T&T Guardian news team vis­it­ed af­fect­ed res­i­dents at Debe Trace yes­ter­day, many of them com­plained that the flood­ing spoiled their Christ­mas hol­i­days.There was no agree­ment on what caused the flood­ing but all agreed fur­ther as­sess­ments should be done to en­sure the high­way would not cre­ate fur­ther flood­ing.

Re­call­ing Christ­mas Day, moth­er of two Mar­lene Mun­gal said her fam­i­ly was about to leave home to vis­it an un­cle when flood wa­ters sur­round­ed their house.In the end, she said, she and her hus­band spent the af­ter­noon with a pitch­fork and shov­el, dig­ging drains to pre­vent wa­ter from en­ter­ing their home."I can't say what caused it but the on­ly thing I know is that it could be the block­ing of the riv­er."Two or three years ago we used to get floods with wa­ter com­ing in­side.

"I don't want that to hap­pen again but see­ing how wa­ter had come up on Christ­mas Day, it looks like it is go­ing to hap­pen again," Mun­gal said.Her neigh­bour, Su­ruj Siew, was al­so strand­ed in­side his home with his wife and four chil­dren as the wa­ter lev­el had reached over three feet deep in his yard."This is the biggest flood we had here for the longest while. I don't know what is the cause of it but it was just ter­ri­ble," Siew said.

Show­ing stains on a wall left by the floods, he said: "Some­how we got out the wa­ter but I don't know what will be com­ing next."It did not come in­to my house but my house was like an is­land be­cause it's high up. Around my house there was three feet or even more wa­ter be­cause there was a lot of rain."He too was not sure what caused the floods but re­mem­bered that ex­ca­va­tors were do­ing work near the riv­er in Gand­hi Vil­lage.

On whether the high­way would bring ex­ces­sive flood­ing to the area, he said once prop­er drainage was built, he did not see a prob­lem.Across the road, 74-year-old Leelawat­tee Har­riper­sad said the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion sim­ply had to fix the drain and clean it more of­ten.She said while the high­way work could have caused flood­ing in some ar­eas, she did not be­lieve it caused the floods in Debe.

HRM mem­ber Eliz­a­beth Ramb­harose, who lives in the area, said a hy­drol­o­gy re­port should be done be­fore work con­tin­ued on the Debe to Mon De­sir leg of the high­way.She said many res­i­dents were con­cerned about the dan­ger posed by that seg­ment of the high­way but were afraid to speak out."I per­son­al­ly think that this flood­ing is be­cause of the con­struc­tion of the high­way. Since that con­struc­tion start­ed, the flood­ing has in­creased and as you see the drains are clear right now.

"There are no block­ages and if some rain comes au­to­mat­i­cal­ly the flood­ing will rise."I think a prop­er hy­dro re­port needs to be done in this area be­fore any con­struc­tion takes place," Ramb­harose added.