Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John was on the ground at the Sea Lots wa­ter pumps yes­ter­day, as­sur­ing cit­i­zens that her min­istry is work­ing around the clock to keep Port-of-Spain dry and to strength­en the coun­try’s flood re­sponse.

She made the vis­it af­ter Port-of-Spain was brought to a stand­still sev­er­al days this week as tor­ren­tial rains trig­gered wide­spread flood­ing across the cap­i­tal and parts of west­ern Trinidad.

John said all pumps were ful­ly op­er­a­tional dur­ing this week’s heavy rain­fall and con­firmed that she per­son­al­ly turned them on dur­ing the down­pour.

“Last night, the City Cor­po­ra­tion took out bot­tles, even a mat­tress and a couch, from the drains. We have to be re­spon­si­ble. Garbage is not the en­tire sto­ry, but it is a big part of the sto­ry,” John said, stress­ing that flood­ing would con­tin­ue if cit­i­zens keep dump­ing waste in­to rivers and box drains.

She ex­plained that drains had al­ready been de­silt­ed twice this year, in Feb­ru­ary and May, but lit­ter con­tin­ued to choke wa­ter­ways. She added that fines were be­ing con­sid­ered but warned they were not the com­plete so­lu­tion.

“Yes, we were talk­ing about that yes­ter­day, and of course, it means go­ing to Par­lia­ment, but these are medi­um-term mea­sures. Some­how, we have to get it in­to our na­tion­al con­scious­ness.

“In the con­stituen­cy I am re­spon­si­ble for, I saw in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing along a par­tic­u­lar road. I asked the lo­cal gov­ern­ment to clean it up and put up some signs. When I felt they were tak­ing too long, I took mon­ey from my own purse and had the signs made. And do you know what hap­pened? Peo­ple start­ed dump­ing right be­low the very signs that said, ‘Do Not Dump’—eight of them,” the min­is­ter said.

She added, “So how do we get peo­ple to part­ner with us? Not just to be their broth­er’s keep­er when their own yard floods, but to think about their neigh­bour whose home is al­so flood­ing. Some­how, there must be a greater sense of con­scious­ness—a re­al call to ac­tion.”

John con­firmed the Cab­i­net had ap­proved 114 projects across the coun­try, in­clud­ing works in Bal­la­ta Ravine, Chi­na­man Ravine, Son­ny Ladoo Main Road, and Hon­da Riv­er. She al­so high­light­ed up­com­ing CAF-fund­ed projects that would mod­ernise Port-of-Spain’s drainage sys­tem.

“Right now, we are map­ping all un­der­ground in­fra­struc­ture drains, WASA lines, T&TEC, NGC be­cause no one can tell us ex­act­ly where every­thing goes. We must know what we have be­fore we build bet­ter,” she ex­plained.

The CAF project will fo­cus on the Ca­roni and South Oropouche Basins, bring in tech­nolo­gies such as per­me­able pave­ments to ab­sorb rain­fall, and cre­ate ded­i­cat­ed util­i­ty and drainage cor­ri­dors to pre­vent fu­ture in­fra­struc­ture con­flicts.

John al­so re­vealed that four pumps in the St Ann’s Riv­er area were mov­ing 40,000 gal­lons of wa­ter per minute in­to the sea to pro­tect the city. In ad­di­tion, three new high-ca­pac­i­ty mo­bile pumps, each ca­pa­ble of 6,500 gal­lons per minute, have been ac­quired to fur­ther boost flood re­sponse.

“It is not that we are un­pre­pared. We are not sit­ting idly by. It breaks your heart to see peo­ple’s cars float­ing away, but we are on the job 24/7,” John said, not­ing that she per­son­al­ly called the head of drainage dur­ing heavy rain­fall events to en­sure pumps and drains are func­tion­ing.

She said the Gov­ern­ment was al­so pur­su­ing de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of pub­lic of­fices to ease con­ges­tion in the cap­i­tal and re­duce the dis­rup­tion caused by flood­ing.

“We can­not erad­i­cate flood­ing com­plete­ly, but we can make it an in­fre­quent oc­cur­rence. At the same time, de­cen­tral­is­ing will re­duce the time cit­i­zens spend in traf­fic,” she said, point­ing to the grid­lock faced by work­ers trav­el­ling from La Brea and Point Fortin.