A flash flood yes­ter­day struck sev­er­al parts of North Trinidad and prompt­ed a re­sponse from Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Jack Warn­er.

Warn­er, speak­ing while the rain fell, said a lo­cal flood ex­pert would be bought on board to ad­vise the min­istry as to how to ef­fec­tive­ly curb flood­ing. He said the ex­pert would fo­cus on flood elim­i­na­tion in Port-of-Spain. Warn­er said oth­er mea­sures tak­en by the min­istry dur­ing the rainy sea­son would in­clude build­ing re­ten­tion ponds, drainage works and dredg­ing of rivers in rur­al Trinidad.

When asked how these plans dif­fered from those of the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment, Warn­er said there was pre­vi­ous­ly a lack of plan­ning and pri­or­i­ties. He slammed the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, say­ing it had not tak­en steps dur­ing the dry sea­son to pre­vent flood­ing when the rains came. He added: "Lit­tle to no work was done dur­ing the dry sea­son."

He charged that the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment was more con­cerned with "build­ing sky­scrap­ers and sum­mits" than mak­ing life eas­i­er for cit­i­zens. The city flood was the re­sult of an ex­treme weath­er pat­tern which was dis­cussed at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence by the Gov­ern­ment's Press Sec­re­tary Garvin Nicholas.