RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Over 100 Cepep work­ers were despatched to Ma­yaro on Thurs­day to help clean up the slush and de­bris caused by four days of flood­ing.

Many of the res­i­dents had start­ed clean­ing since Wednes­day when the floods fi­nal­ly sub­sided.

How­ev­er, res­i­dent Ker­ron Kallicha­ran said they faced a set­back when WASA locked off the pipe-borne wa­ter from the lines.

"WASA do us a re­al wicked­ness. They know we have to clean up and wa­ter came in the pipes yes­ter­day evening but it has gone to­day. We have the Cepep work­ers but we can­not clean with­out wa­ter," Kallicha­ran com­plained.

Neil Ram­dath, man­ag­er of the of­fice of Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray told Guardian Me­dia that soiled fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances had to be dis­card­ed.

"We were thank­ful to cor­po­rate T&T for the out­pour­ing of sup­port we got. Many small busi­ness own­ers in the area con­tributed food, drinks and oth­er items which will be dis­trib­uted to the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies," Ram­dath said.

A man wades through floods at Mayaro. Image by Kristian De Silva

He al­so thanked Pres­tige Hold­ings for pro­vid­ing break­fast and lunch to the Cepep work­ers as they worked to­geth­er to clean hous­es.

Ram­dath said how­ev­er there were 10 to 12 hous­es in the con­stituen­cy.

"Two of these are on the verge of col­lapse and we are ad­vis­ing the fam­i­lies to find al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion. One house in Lib­ertsville has to­tal­ly col­lapsed," Ram­dath said.

Ma­yaro res­i­dent Vic­to­ria Ray­mond said every­thing on her side has re­turned to nor­mal.

"We are just thank­ing God," she said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to WASA's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Kelvin Ro­maine who said he has been li­ais­ing with the MP as it re­lates to clean up.

" I had giv­en the as­sur­ance that we would have made every ef­fort to have wa­ter avail­able and I al­so in­struct­ed the Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er to do the same so there should be some lev­el of sup­ply in the ar­eas," Ro­maine said.

Dave Saijan collects food from Imam Adhimool Rahim at Mafeking Village, Mayaro. Image by Kristian De Silva

Mean­while, sup­plies con­tin­ued to be dis­trib­uted in Wood­land and Pe­nal as flood wa­ter slow­ly re­ced­ed caus­ing the Met Of­fice to dis­con­tin­ue its river­ine flood alert.

In a state­ment on Thurs­day, it said riv­er lev­els across Trinidad were well be­low their thresh­olds and no longer posed a threat to the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

It said lo­calised pond­ing/flood­ing per­sist­ed in some ar­eas and a grad­ual de­crease in the wa­ter lev­els was ex­pect­ed.

Peo­ple were ad­vised to mon­i­tor the weath­er and riv­er lev­els be­fore ven­tur­ing out and to avoid ar­eas with flood wa­ter.

Sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties were hard hit by floods since Sat­ur­day. These in­clud­ed Wood­land, Pe­nal, Bar­rack­pore, Bam­boo #2, part of Ca­roni, El Car­men and Mafek­ing, Ma­yaro.