AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

St Au­gus­tine Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Khadi­jah Ameen has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing cit­i­zens by al­low­ing se­vere flood­ing to con­tin­ue across the coun­try.

Dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Mon­day Night Vir­tu­al Fo­rum, Ameen al­so called out Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan for not mak­ing the na­tion’s flood­ing a pri­or­i­ty.

“What do we hear from the man re­spon­si­ble for the up­keep of our ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go? You know what he says? ‘It is nor­mal. Those ar­eas have a low gra­di­ent. That is ex­pect­ed. Floods are hap­pen­ing all over the world,’” Ameen said.

She added that there is al­so an at­tempt by the Sinanan to try to get cit­i­zens to ac­cept the mas­sive flood­ing be­ing seen na­tion­wide as a nor­mal oc­cur­rence.

“He is so des­per­ate to cov­er up his ne­glect of the in­fra­struc­ture in this coun­try of the wa­ter­cours­es that he has failed.”

In the past two months, flood­ing has oc­curred through­out var­i­ous parts of the coun­try as a re­sult of ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions the coun­try would have ex­pe­ri­enced.

Since last week, no­table flood­ing has oc­curred across parts of East Trinidad, some oc­cur­ring with­in Ameen’s con­stituen­cy of St Au­gus­tine, Val­sayn South, Ca­roni East, Bam­boo #2 and Bam­boo #3.

Mean­while, speak­ing at the of­fi­cial sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Orop­une Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and Com­mer­cial Cen­tre yes­ter­day, Ameen praised the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) for rec­ti­fy­ing ma­jor flood­ing prob­lems in that area.

“I want to com­mend the HDC for its re­sponse in en­sur­ing the em­bank­ments, the pumps, the re­ten­tion ponds are main­tained and re­spond­ing to us when we call to pre­vent what hap­pened in 2018, that big flood­ing,” she told a gath­er­ing.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia af­ter­wards, Ameen said one of the ma­jor caus­es of con­tin­ued flood­ing in her con­stituen­cy were old and fail­ing flood­gates that have ei­ther not been re­placed or in­stalled.

“The so­lu­tion is very sim­ple. There is a wa­ter­course that leads to the Guaya­mare Riv­er that needs a mech­a­nism such as a flood­gate to pre­vent the wa­ter from com­ing in. We have iden­ti­fied the lo­ca­tion and it is for the Min­is­ter to act. In the Spring Vil­lage area, where you have Trantrill Road and where ve­hi­cles got stuck and so on, in those ar­eas, again, the em­bank­ment and the coun­ty river­bank have to be strength­ened.”

She urged the Gov­ern­ment to do more and not politi­cise how much they aid each con­stituen­cy, ref­er­enc­ing re­cent ma­jor flood­ing in Ma­coya be­cause of a re­cent build­ing project in the Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy, forc­ing wa­ters south of the Main Road in the St Au­gus­tine con­stituen­cy.

“Rain doesn’t fall in PNM or UNC ar­eas, so there is some­thing that has to be done and they know what needs to be done. It is just for them to ap­prove it.”