The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port has al­lo­cat­ed $100 mil­lion to deal with this year's ex­pect­ed above nor­mal rain­fall which can lead to per­sis­tent floods.

In prepa­ra­tion for the June to No­vem­ber rainy sea­son, the min­istry has em­barked on a na­tion­wide drainage pro­gramme to help re­duce flood­ing in low-ly­ing ar­eas across the coun­try.

But de­spite putting mea­sures in place to deal with the large vol­umes of wa­ter from the rain­fall, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said it was im­pos­si­ble to elim­i­nate flood­ings due to the change in the coun­try's weath­er pat­terns.

Joined by a team from the min­istry, com­pris­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary So­nia Fran­cis-Year­wood, di­rec­tor of drainage Paula Web­ber and chief tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer Navin Ram­s­ingh, Sinanan said in Feb­ru­ary the min­istry be­gan rolling out 350 de­silt­ing and 50 con­struc­tion projects across the coun­try.

The projects are be­ing un­der­tak­en in four phas­es, with phase one be­ing most crit­i­cal. Some of the crit­i­cal ar­eas in­clude Ca­paro, Diego Mar­tin, Bagatelle, Lengua and Poole Rivers.

In the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion which faces flood­ing year af­ter year, Sinanan said there were 85 projects to be done.

"We did slow down the projects dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. For­tu­nate­ly, the Health Min­is­ter al­lowed us to restart the projects two weeks ago."

Based on a re­port re­ceived from the Drainage Di­vi­sion, Sinanan said phase four was ex­pect­ed to wrap up in the com­ing weeks.

Sinanan at­trib­uted the floods to the high vol­ume of rain­fall the coun­try has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in the last three years and the lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty of wa­ter chan­nels.

"This is some­thing we want peo­ple to un­der­stand. There is no way you can elim­i­nate flood­ing. At least some point in the year some coun­tries do get af­fect­ed by flood­ing. What you try to do is min­imise the flood­ing and en­sure you have a quick runoff."

Sinanan said the min­istry has utilised 50 con­trac­tors to clean drains, wa­ter­cours­es and rivers dur­ing the dry sea­son.

"So the de­silt­ing project so far we are try­ing to bud­get $60 mil­lion."

The de­silt­ing con­trac­tors, Sinanan said would have ten­dered a price to the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board.

"You ten­der at the CTB....they send out a list. We use that list to call out the con­trac­tors based on the price they ten­dered."

He said con­struc­tion projects would cov­er more than one fi­nan­cial year.

Sinanan said the min­istry will in­stall mo­bile pumps and sluice gates as well as up­grade its pump hous­es at a cost of an­oth­er $40 mil­lion.

'But that is a three-year pro­gramme we will roll out. This year we are hop­ing to in­stall five pumps at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions."

Last year, a pump was in­stalled at South Quay to re­move ex­cess wa­ter from the cap­i­tal city while an­oth­er will be com­mis­sioned in Fe­lic­i­ty next month.

Sinanan ad­mit­ted that his min­istry will ap­ply to the Fi­nance Min­istry for "more fund­ing in the mid-year re­view" to com­plete the de­silt­ing pro­gramme.

From next month, he said the min­istry will dis­patch heavy ma­chin­ery in ar­eas that en­counter land­slips such as La­dy Young Road.

"Yes, we are pre­pared but at the end of the day we have to work with what we have."

Sinanan said the min­istry has to bat­tle with de­vel­op­ers, farm­ers and cit­i­zens who en­croach, build homes and plant on the riv­er re­serve which ham­pers their work.

"Most of these hous­es should not have been built on the riv­er banks. That is why every year cer­tain ar­eas are get­ting flood­ed out and peo­ple would com­plain they get­ting flood­ed out and the gov­ern­ment not do­ing any­thing about it."

Sinanan said he knows peo­ple whose homes have been re­peat­ed­ly flood­ed will not sup­port the Gov­ern­ment when they go to the polls for the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

"It is par for the course. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it is an elec­tion year and if you clean 25 rivers in one area some­body will be able to find one or two that were not cleaned and they would high­light that."

Sinanan said at the end of the day, no­body wants their home or prop­er­ty in­vad­ed by wa­ter.

"It's not that we are look­ing for some­body to blame. But you need some­where to vent. I have no prob­lem with them vent­ing with the politi­cians. It is bet­ter they vent than go mad. It is not a nice thing to see that every­thing you buy gets flood­ed out."

Met of­fice key mes­sage:

* June to Au­gust is like­ly to be wet­ter than usu­al with above nor­mal rain­fall.

*Sep­tem­ber to No­vem­ber is favoured to be as wet as usu­al with near nor­mal rain­fall.

Like­ly im­pacts:

*El­e­vat­ed flood­ing risk in gen­er­al, but more so for flood-prone ar­eas.

*Lo­calised heavy rain­fall and pro­longed wet spells will in­crease flash flood­ing po­ten­tial in high risk/flood-prone ar­eas and with­in wa­ter­sheds.