An­na-Lisa Paul

Heavy rains on Thurs­day left scores of res­i­dents in Beetham Gar­dens, Laven­tille, bat­tling ris­ing flood­wa­ters which be­gan flow­ing out of their toi­lets, bath­room and kitchen sinks.

And while mop­ping up op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued in some homes yes­ter­day, sev­er­al per­sons aban­doned this and watched help­less­ly when the rains came down again and black, smelly sew­er wa­ter again filled their homes and yards.

Fight­ing back tears as she watched the skies black­en­ing around 11 am, Sylvia Git­tens, of Main Street, Phase 3, point­ed to the riv­er me­tres from her home, as she said the drains had not been cleared for months.

Hav­ing been in­un­dat­ed by more than three feet of wa­ter on Thurs­day, Git­tens com­plained bit­ter­ly of the lack of help from MP Fitzger­ald Hinds and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials.

She said, “They not clean­ing the riv­er, all how you call. I does be call­ing the coun­cil­lor. I does be call­ing the MP. So, when you call...they telling you one thing, the coun­cil­lor telling you the MP and the MP telling you the coun­cil­lor. You don’t know who to talk to.”

This back and forth, she said, had left many res­i­dents in dis­tress as homes are now be­ing ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by a mal­func­tion­ing sew­er sys­tem every time it rains.

Claim­ing to have made nu­mer­ous re­quests since 2021 to have the riv­er dredged and the drains cleared of silt and de­bris, the moth­er of two said, “Is not on­ly I does get af­fect­ed...is this whole stretch...it have peo­ple down the road, it have peo­ple high­er up. I beg up to Tues­day, I tried call­ing the coun­cil­lor, no an­swer.”

Ad­mit­ting she sent a mes­sage to coun­cil­lor Ak­il Au­dain, Git­tens said, “He said it out of his hands, talk to the MP be­cause he (Au­dain) is part of the cor­po­ra­tion and they are not the ones to clean the rivers.”

Git­tens said her son, nine, who is wheel­chair bound, daugh­ter, 13, and 64-year-old moth­er were un­able to rest com­fort­ably every time the rains come.

Among the items they lost yes­ter­day were cloth­ing, books, the stove and a chest of draw­ers.

Git­tens’ moth­er Lynette Bra­vo, who has lived in the com­mu­ni­ty for 35 years, said this was the worst flood­ing they had seen. The home was last flood­ed-out in 2018.

Mean­while, Ka­reem Mar­celle, who was re­cent­ly called to the Bar, was as­sist­ed by some of the young men from Phase Two to fill and dis­trib­ute dish­wash­ing liq­uid and bleach to af­fect­ed house­holds.

“We had floods through­out the com­mu­ni­ty of Beetham Gar­dens and we have a sew­er prob­lem as well and I think that added to it, so a lot of wa­ter was com­ing through per­sons’ toi­lets and bath­rooms be­cause the sew­er backed up, so even­tu­al­ly per­sons got flood­ed-out. In some places, per­sons got up to four feet of wa­ter. Some per­sons lost every­thing,” Mar­celle told Guardian Me­dia.

Point­ing to the clean­ing sup­plies do­nat­ed by kind per­sons, Mar­celle said sev­er­al re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions had re­spond­ed to the calls for as­sis­tance and dis­patched CEPEP teams al­so. He con­firmed there con­tin­ued to be some con­fu­sion over which agency is re­spon­si­ble for dredg­ing the rivers and clean­ing drains in the com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, he point­ed out that ex­ten­sive work is be­ing done by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to ad­dress the area’s col­lapsed sew­er sys­tem.

Hinds: Is­sues be­ing dealt with

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Hinds con­firmed re­ceiv­ing calls from Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dent on Thurs­day and be­fore that, which he de­scribed as “re­quests for the de-silt­ing or clean­ing of cer­tain drains.”

He said he spoke with coun­cil­lor Ak­il Au­dain, fol­low­ing which he al­so reached out to the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

Hinds said he ad­vised some con­stituents that, “they are in the process of clean­ing out all the out-flow drains from the Beetham.”

Hinds said this work was be­ing done by the De­fence Force be­cause “the usu­al op­er­a­tion of hir­ing pri­vate con­trac­tors with their equip­ment to do it is not now an op­tion.”

“They do not want to come in­to that zone to do any work and the res­i­dents ac­knowl­edge that that is in­deed the case, be­cause when con­trac­tors bring equip­ment there, they van­dalise the equip­ment, they de­mand mon­ey with men­aces...as a re­sult, no con­trac­tor wants to go to work, so we are now re­ly­ing on el­e­ments of the De­fence Force.”

He said the op­er­a­tions were in­ter­rupt­ed but they will re­turn on Mon­day to con­tin­ue clean­ing the wa­ter­cours­es.

Hinds said cli­mate change had brought more rapid and heavy rain­fall in sev­er­al ar­eas.

He con­firmed the col­lapsed sew­er sys­tem at Phase One was ad­dressed sev­er­al weeks ago, and that a sec­ond por­tion which suf­fered the same fate was al­so be­ing ad­dressed.