Mo­torists had to take a de­tour on Tues­day night when they en­coun­tered heavy flood­ing along Mis­sion Road. Dim­itris Sama­roo, who drove through 200 me­ters of flood­ed road­way with his 4×4 ve­hi­cle, said the wa­ter was al­most one me­ter deep in some ar­eas.

Around 8pm dri­vers of small cars had to ei­ther take a de­tour through Lime Fruit Road or head back out on­to the high­way and use the ex­it in the vicin­i­ty of Courts near the tun­nel or pass through Preysal.

Ryan Ram­per­sad, the Chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/ Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, (CT­TRC) said there is the ur­gent need for the clean­ing of the La Que­sa Riv­er. Ram­per­sad said the CT­TRC does not have the heavy equip­ment need­ed to do the main­te­nance work on that wa­ter­course.

Ram­per­sad said the CT­TRC has made sev­er­al re­quest to the Drainage Di­vi­sion at the Min­istry of Works to have the area cleared in the short­est pos­si­ble time. He said “ We are call­ing on the Drainage Di­vi­sion to pri­or­i­tize the La Que­sa Riv­er, we can’t un­der­stand why it has not been cleaned, we are ask­ing that it be done as a mat­ter of ur­gency.

There are clogs along the wa­ter­course that have been iden­ti­fied by var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties, by var­i­ous res­i­dents. With the flood­ing that took place yes­ter­day we ex­pect that there would be more de­bris, more trees, more bam­boo, more rub­bish mak­ing these clogs even worse now.”

Ram­per­sad said the rains did not fall for a long time on Tues­day. He said if the area ex­pe­ri­ences a day long down­pour the sit­u­a­tion would wors­en.