CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Cit­i­zens are be­ing told they must now adapt to the flood­ing sit­u­a­tion af­fect­ing this coun­try.

Over the week­end there were sev­er­al re­ports of flood­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas in east and south Trinidad.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day Se­nior Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Co­or­di­na­tor at the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Jer­ry David said be­cause of cli­mate change and oth­er fac­tors, flood­ing has be­come a world­wide phe­nom­e­non even with all the new sci­ence and plan­ning tak­ing place.

He said here in Trinidad and To­ba­go it is no dif­fer­ent.

“We would have to learn to adapt.”

He added, “If there is a fight be­tween man and na­ture you know na­ture will win.”

He said now peo­ple must not on­ly adapt but be vig­i­lant so that re­cov­ery could take place.

“If it is that every two years you are be­ing im­pact­ed by this lev­el of wa­ter and the wa­ter is en­ter­ing your home and it is de­stroy­ing your fab­ric fur­ni­ture, and many peo­ple have fab­ric fur­ni­ture; it’s the mod­ern way to have fur­ni­ture, but per­haps it’s time to adapt more and get dif­fer­ent fur­ni­ture.”

David said in­creased rain­fall aside, there are is­sues such as un­planned de­vel­op­ments and in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing of garbage in wa­ter­cours­es that need to be dealt with.

For its part, he said the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has been set­ting up com­mu­ni­ty emer­gency re­sponse teams where it trains peo­ple to rec­og­nize, re­spond and re­cov­er from haz­ards.

He al­so praised the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port for the work done to ma­jor wa­ter­cours­es which re­sult­ed in less flood­ing in tra­di­tion­al flood-prone ar­eas.

Two week­ends ago line min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan con­duct­ed a tour to ar­eas Gas­par­il­lo, Arou­ca and Mal­oney Trinidad which nev­er had an is­sue with flood­ing pri­or to this rainy sea­son.

He said more en­force­ment will be done to pre­vent peo­ple from di­vert­ing wa­ter­ways. Sinanan al­so said the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Town and Coun­try Plan­ning and the Drainage De­part­ment of his min­istry needs to be re­viewed mov­ing for­ward.