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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Flooding woes: Rousillac residents beg for help

by

20140823

Rousil­lac res­i­dents were forced to re­main in their homes af­ter parts of the road in their com­mu­ni­ty were sub­merged in flood wa­ter on Thurs­day.Res­i­dents blamed the flood on in­suf­fi­cient and poor drainage and the block­age of a main wa­ter course by a land de­vel­op­er.The overnight show­ers caused the drains and riv­er to over­flow, and the wa­ter flood­ed the road and peo­ple's prop­er­ties.Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian, Siew Jaikaran said Boodoos­ingh Ex­ten­sion Road had been ne­glect­ed for the past 47 years.

"No road re­pairs, no cut­ting of grass, no drainage, taxis not even work­ing in here be­cause the roads so bad," Jaikaran said.He said he had made nu­mer­ous com­plaints to the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, but had re­ceived no re­sponse.Jaikaran said he wrote to the cor­po­ra­tion's CEO in 2008 ask­ing that the road be paved, the drain cleaned and grass cut, but he got a re­sponse on­ly six years lat­er."Up to now noth­ing has been done. We can­not tol­er­ate this any­more."

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Sum­intra Choonoo, who lives at Ner­an­thar Trace, looked on help­less­ly as the floods streamed in­to her back­yard, trans­form­ing it in­to a pond.She was wor­ried that the flood would reach her wash­ing ma­chines, which were on el­e­vat­ed ground. How­ev­er, Choonoo, who grows crops which she sells in the neigh­bour­hood, said her pro­duce was de­stroyed."The wa­ter is about knee high. We found scor­pi­on, cen­tipede and a snake in the house."

Choonoo, who lives with her hus­band De­op­er­sad and three chil­dren, said re­cent­ly a box drain was con­struct­ed along­side her fence."It stopped short. So where they want the wa­ter to go?"Her hus­band said a few years ago a land de­vel­op­er blocked the riv­er. The cor­po­ra­tion re­moved the block­age but it was blocked again, he said."There was some con­tro­ver­sy with the land," he added.

When con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, La Brea coun­cil­lor Ger­ald Debe­sette said the area was rep­re­sent­ed by him­self and Ota­heite/Rousil­lac coun­cil­lor Cha­nar­daye Ra­mad­hars­ingh.But Debe­sette dis­agreed with the claim that the area had been ne­glect­ed."I would not say that. If you re­al­ly check the area you will see box drains on both sides of the road. What hap­pen is that it is low-ly­ing area, it was rice land. There is swamp on the four cor­ners of the road."

No mat­ter how of­ten the wa­ter cours­es were dredged, he said, they would con­tin­ue to flood.He added, "We start­ed drainage from the oth­er side, Sobo. We al­most reach three quar­ter com­ing down to that (Boodoos­ingh Ex­ten­sion Road) area."Told about the com­plaint that the riv­er was blocked by a land de­vel­op­er, Debe­sette said he would look in­to it.


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