Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Res­i­dents across parts of Cen­tral Trinidad were strug­gling to cope with se­vere flood­ing yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing heavy rain­fall that caused trib­u­taries of the Cunu­pia Riv­er to over­flow, in­un­dat­ing homes, farms and com­mu­ni­ties.

Dharam­daye Mungroo, 81, of Wel­come Road, Cunu­pia, spent Wednes­day night sleep­ing in a cold room, on a bed just inch­es above the flood­wa­ters that flowed in­to her bed­room. Her home was flood­ed when a near­by wa­ter­course burst its banks.

Her grand­son, Ar­ju­na Din­di­al, al­so ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing. Ac­cord­ing to Din­di­al, wa­ter be­gan flow­ing in­to the com­mu­ni­ty around 2 am yes­ter­day, ris­ing to knee height. He said house­hold items and ap­pli­ances were lift­ed on­to ta­bles in an at­tempt to keep them above the flood­wa­ters.

Mungroo re­port­ed dam­age to her kitchen cup­boards, while at Din­di­al’s res­i­dence, he at­tempt­ed to con­struct a makeshift sand­bag bar­ri­er to hold back the wa­ter. Din­di­al said he was forced to el­e­vate his few be­long­ings and sleep on a bed above the ris­ing flood.

“Me eh sleep yet. I get up this morn­ing, start to wash down, sweep down the place,” he said.

Near­by, farmer Prakash Prab­hu­di­al, of Es­mer­al­da Road, es­ti­mat­ed loss­es of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50,000 af­ter most of his six-acre cab­bage crop was sub­merged. He spent most of yes­ter­day morn­ing at­tempt­ing to sal­vage what he could to re­coup some of his loss­es.

Prab­hu­di­al ex­pressed hope that “the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion would show some sort of sym­pa­thy to farm­ers who have suf­fered loss­es be­cause of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.”

At Mon Plasir Road, flood­wa­ters con­tin­ued to rise as the trib­u­tary at the end of Riv­er Road reached its brim. Kevin Dhan­raj was seen de­liv­er­ing sand­bags to the home of Paras­ram Ja­groo, a lo­cal fash­ion de­sign­er.

Ja­groo not­ed that his house had been flood­ed twice in the past year, re­sult­ing in loss­es to his sewing busi­ness. He was brac­ing for more loss­es.

Mean­while, Ca­roni East MP, Dr Rishad Seecher­an, ad­vised af­fect­ed res­i­dents to con­tact his of­fices for as­sis­tance.

“In such ar­eas as Chin Chin Road, Cunu­pia and El Car­men, home­own­ers, busi­ness peo­ple, and farm­ers have not suf­fered the dam­age and dis­lo­ca­tion that they ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing pri­or rainy sea­sons.

“There are a few iso­lat­ed in­ci­dents of dis­lo­ca­tion and in­con­ve­nience. At Pe­tersville, for ex­am­ple, a stu­dent was un­able to sit the CSEC ex­am­i­na­tion.”

He re­as­sured res­i­dents that the Ca­roni East con­stituen­cy staff, along with rel­e­vant agen­cies, re­mained vig­i­lant in their ef­forts to pre­vent fur­ther dis­as­ter.