Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Over 150 house­holds were in­un­dat­ed by flood­ing in the Cunu­pia area yes­ter­day.

Flood­wa­ters in the wake of tor­ren­tial down­pours on Wednes­day, in­vad­ed nu­mer­ous ar­eas in Mon Plaisir, caus­ing dam­ages to res­i­dents’ house­hold items, school sup­plies and even put one fash­ion de­sign­er out of busi­ness.

Paras­ram Ja­groop, a fash­ion de­sign­er from Mon Plaisir Road, said he lost every­thing, in­clud­ing his sewing shop.

“I nev­er get flood­ed here, first time I get flood­ed here,” Ja­groop told Guardian Me­dia.

Ja­groop is a pop­u­lar fig­ure in the com­mu­ni­ty and has de­signed gowns for many beau­ty queens.  Res­i­dent Rasheed Mo­hammed said he had to use dirt to cre­ate an em­bank­ment to keep the wa­ter out of his  house. Mo­hammed said the wa­ters start­ed ris­ing around mid­day on Wednes­day, and sub­se­quent­ly went down on­ly to come back again yes­ter­day.

Bal­matie Gosyne, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Las Lo­mas/San Rafael on the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC), said a project to en­hance the flow of  the Cunu­pia Riv­er was sup­posed to be com­plet­ed in the dry sea­son. How­ev­er, she said the project is still pend­ing and is con­tribut­ing to flood­ing in the area. Gosyne said she will at­tempt to get re­lief to the res­i­dents. How­ev­er, she said the CT­TRC has on­ly one work­ing cesspool pump truck.

Judy Ram­roop, whose prop­er­ty bor­ders the South­ern Main Road and the south­ern side of the riv­er, said the con­trac­tors were not an­swer­ing any calls from her. Ram­roop said the riv­er is erod­ing her prop­er­ty, which is at risk of col­laps­ing.

She said just over 12 years ago, a re­tain­ing wall was con­struct­ed in the riv­er and it even­tu­al­ly col­lapsed two years ago. Ram­roop said the con­trac­tor still has equip­ment on her prop­er­ty.

“This is the first time I am see­ing this height of wa­ter and now it’s start­ing to un­der­mine the foun­da­tion,” she said.

Kel­ly Vil­lage/War­renville coun­cil­lor Kam­la Pha­goo said more than 30 homes in her dis­trict were af­fect­ed by flood­ing. She called for com­pen­sa­tion for af­fect­ed res­i­dents.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan said the con­trac­tor do­ing re­pairs to the wall on the Cunu­pia Riv­er will now be asked to speed up the project. Sinanan said work on the project had halt­ed be­cause of the in­clement weath­er that pre­vent­ed the cast­ing of con­crete slabs to com­plete the riv­er’s re­tain­ing wall. He said the works had got­ten off to a slow start ini­tial­ly be­cause the con­trac­tors had prob­lems ac­cess­ing the riv­er banks be­cause sev­er­al res­i­dents had en­croached on the riv­er and were pre­vent­ing the con­trac­tor from get­ting to the prob­lem ar­eas.