An­ge­lo Je­didi­ah

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme Di­rec­tor Pa­tri­cia De Leon-Hen­ry says grant for per­sons who were af­fect­ed by flood­ing in San­gre Grande last year have been com­plet­ed.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents say they are tired of wait­ing and are de­mand­ing more be done to rec­ti­fy their sit­u­a­tions.

The is­sues came up on Thurs­day as the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) host­ed a com­mu­ni­ty sym­po­sium at North East­ern Col­lege, San­gre Grande. The event fo­cused on cop­ing with im­pact-re­lat­ed loss and ac­cess­ing re­lief.

De Leon-Hen­ry told the res­i­dents gath­ered, “The as­sess­ments that we have re­ceived from the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion, we have processed the as­sess­ments for this re­gion and we have ac­tu­al­ly com­plet­ed the pro­cess­ing.”

She added, “A lot of the per­sons have al­ready been paid. The ones that are out­stand­ing are in the process of be­ing paid. But we do have some that were re­ject­ed.”

But some res­i­dents said while they were grate­ful for the grants, this will not make them feel com­fort­able once the rainy sea­son be­gins on June 1.

“The ef­fects of San­gre Grande are go­ing to be on­go­ing and my heart bleeds for per­sons liv­ing in San­gre Grande who will be faced with all those is­sues,” said for­mer UNC coun­cil­lor Nir­mal Singh.

Singh claimed due to sev­er­al il­le­gal build­ing de­vel­op­ments and squat­ters, specif­i­cal­ly along the Va­len­cia stretch, the area con­tin­ues to be­come in­creas­ing­ly prone to dis­as­trous flood­ing events.

“Clear­ing of wa­ter cours­es is fine but the widen­ing of those wa­ter chan­nels in San­gre Grande and en­vi­rons needs to be looked at,” Singh said.

Ac­cord­ing to ODPM CEO Rod­ney Smart, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has been work­ing through­out the year on de­vel­op­ing its dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion plans.

“This com­mit­tee is try­ing to get this coun­try to ral­ly around the fact that dis­as­ters are go­ing to be with us 24/7, 365 days,” Smart said.

“We want to bring a con­cen­trat­ed ef­fort around dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion and pre­pared­ness in the month of May, but through­out the year we are fo­cus­ing on all the oth­er things that are re­quired. But we need to get our coun­try fo­cused on what is com­ing in June, Ju­ly, Au­gust et cetera.”