A high-lev­el meet­ing is sched­uled to­day with the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion as gov­ern­ment moves to ad­dress wors­en­ing drainage is­sues in south Trinidad.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has “is­sued a call for ad­di­tion­al equip­ment to clear wa­ter­cours­es in the Pe­nal/Debe area that have been ne­glect­ed for sev­er­al years.” The re­lease de­scribed the re­gion as a “sen­si­tive flood-prone area.”

The Min­istry al­so ac­knowl­edged that fail­ing in­fra­struc­ture con­tin­ues to leave some com­mu­ni­ties ex­posed. Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen is ex­pect­ed to meet with re­gion­al of­fi­cials in the com­ing days to plan tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions.

While the yel­low-lev­el weath­er alert has been lift­ed, the Min­istry said flood mit­i­ga­tion op­er­a­tions re­main ac­tive across all 14 Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions. Ex­tra equip­ment is be­ing dis­patched, and shel­ters are be­ing pre­pared in high-risk ar­eas. Trained shel­ter man­agers have al­ready been as­signed, and emer­gency pro­to­cols re­viewed.

The min­istry cred­it­ed the “swift co­or­di­na­tion and mo­bil­i­sa­tion” of agen­cies such as the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Units, the Min­istry of Works and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture for help­ing re­duce the im­pact of re­cent flood­ing.