Rhon­dor Dowlat

With the 2016 rainy sea­son creep­ing in ear­li­er than ex­pect­ed, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions through­out the coun­try are still strug­gling to clear wa­ter­ways, in­clud­ing trib­u­taries and drains.

How­ev­er, they claim that de­spite a ma­jor de­lay by the drainage di­vi­sion at the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to clear ma­jor rivers of all de­bris, de-silt­ed and dredged, they are do­ing the best they can.

Many ar­eas af­fect­ed by bush fires dur­ing the dry sea­son have left hills bare of veg­e­ta­tion and this can lead to dev­as­tat­ing land­slides and flood­ing. Cor­po­ra­tions had a jump start as the Zi­ka virus aware­ness cam­paign led to sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ty drains be­ing cleaned to re­move po­ten­tial breed­ing grounds of the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, which trans­mits the virus.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian, chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Hen­ry Awong, said that works to have all trib­u­taries cleared are not quite com­plet­ed yet but gave the as­sur­ance that ef­forts are be­ing has­tened.

"Giv­en our min­i­mum re­sources, in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial, we are try­ing to make it work. We are on­ly al­lo­cat­ed $400,000 and, with that, we would have to rent ad­di­tion­al equip­ment and ma­chin­ery to do the job. But, we are work­ing on clear­ing the trib­u­taries and drains through­out the re­gion," Awong said.

He added that on top the pri­or­i­ty list is the Clax­ton Bay area which ex­pe­ri­ences flash flood­ing every time there is a heavy down­pour of rain.

"We are re­al­ly fo­cus­ing on this area be­cause we do not want a re­peat of last year and oth­er flood prone ar­eas. We are work­ing quick­ly."

San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ter­ry Ron­don said his cor­po­ra­tion is not quite ready but ad­mit­ted they would "soon get there." He, how­ev­er, not­ed that ma­jor rivers in­clud­ing the Matu­ra, Va­len­cia and Guaico Rivers are in dire need of clear­ing and dredg­ing works. These are re­al­ly sup­posed to be the work of the min­istry but we are not wait­ing on any­one, we are try­ing to do what we can and as much as we can for our­selves."

He al­so ad­mit­ted that he was get­ting as­sis­tance from the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Franklin Khan and is ex­pect­ed to have two dis­as­ter units es­tab­lished in San­gre Grande and Ma­yaro soon.

"We sent out let­ters to the Min­istry of Works about the ma­jor rivers and out­stand­ing works that must be done but, at the same time, we are not go­ing to wait. If we have to get help from the burgess­es around, well so be it," Ron­don said.

Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ed­win Good­ing said the cor­po­ra­tion is ready for the rainy sea­son, in terms of lo­cal drains but def­i­nite­ly not ready with re­spect to the ma­jor rivers/wa­ter­ways.

"We need to get the Min­istry of Works here," Good­ing said.

An of­fi­cial at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion said that clear­ing of wa­ter­ways was on­go­ing. The of­fi­cial, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, urged res­i­dents to help in get­ting the work done by iden­ti­fy­ing ar­eas which need to be cleaned and which rivers need dredg­ing.