Shas­tri Boodan

The Gov­ern­ment will spend $300 mil­lion to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing this fi­nan­cial year. Mak­ing the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan al­so said that for those il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing space along the riverbeds, their days are num­bered.

Sinanan spoke with the me­dia when he vis­it­ed de-silt­ing projects at the Hon­da and Ca­paro Rivers in Cen­tral.

In Cen­tral there are 132 projects to be com­plet­ed this year, Sinanan said. “It’s a very ag­gres­sive drainage pro­gramme this year, where the Gov­ern­ment has agreed to com­mit close to $300 mil­lion on our drainage projects, and we are far ad­vanced and try­ing to take full ad­van­tage of the dry sea­son.

“Phase one is com­plet­ed, and we are try­ing to com­plete phase two be­cause projects are done in dif­fer­ent phas­es. We are on track to com­plete our de­silt­ing pro­grammes and oth­er ma­jor riv­er clean­ing and main­te­nance pro­grammes with­in the fi­nan­cial year.”

Sinanan said work was on­go­ing in all drainage di­vi­sions, but the pri­or­i­ty was giv­en to ar­eas that were hit the hard­est dur­ing the last rainy sea­son. He said sev­er­al prob­lems have been at­trib­uted to flood­ing in­clud­ing garbage in the wa­ter­cours­es, en­croach­ment on riv­er banks and en­croach­ment on the wa­ter cours­es.

He said, “We have to use the bank to shape the rivers and re­build, and in some cas­es, peo­ple threat­en the (ex­ca­va­tor) op­er­a­tors and say you can’t go in there, we have crops on the bank, but we have to do what we have to do, and we will go in to cre­ate the ac­cess to the wa­ter­cours­es.”

An excavator works on the banks of the Honda River, Chaguanas.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Sinanan said his min­istry was work­ing with lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies to rid river­banks of il­le­gal struc­tures that pre­vent the move­ment of ma­chin­ery.

 He said, “It is a prob­lem, but the weath­er pat­tern tells us now that we have to do what we have to do to get it done.”

Sinanan said sev­er­al projects are be­ing un­der­tak­en on the Ca­roni Riv­er. He said there are four to five ar­eas where the banks would be built and gates and pumps would be in­stalled.

Di­rec­tor of Drainage Kather­ine Bad­loo-Do­er­ga said it was cost­ing T&T quite a hefty sum to re­place stolen sluice gates and flood gates. She said the gates have been stolen in the Sea Lots area and Cen­tral.

She said a stolen gate cre­ates an en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lem be­cause of the in­tru­sion of salt wa­ter in­to farm­ing ar­eas.

Bad­loo-Do­er­ga said a one-square-me­tre gate can cost around $100,000 while slight­ly larg­er gates can cost over $250,000-$400,000.

She said 21 sluice gates have been re­placed in the Ca­roni area while pumps have been ser­viced or re­placed in south and north Trinidad. A new pump would be in­stalled in El So­cor­ro and a sec­ond pump would be in­stalled to com­ple­ment the ex­ist­ing pump at Bam­boo #2, she added. She said Bam­boo #2  flood­ed last year be­cause of breach­es in the Ca­roni Riv­er Bank.