Sascha Wil­son

There were calls for ur­gent mea­sures to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing yes­ter­day, as sev­er­al parts of the coun­try were in­un­dat­ed by flood­wa­ters, leav­ing hun­dreds of res­i­dents ma­rooned in their homes.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray said re­peat­ed floods in the Ma­yaro com­mu­ni­ties and oth­er parts of the coun­try de­mand­ed im­me­di­ate and ex­ten­sive ac­tion from the Drainage Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

“Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan must di­rect the di­vi­sion to ur­gent­ly ini­ti­ate mea­sures for a speedy runoff of the over­flow­ing wa­ter­cours­es and re­me­di­al steps to avert fur­ther floods,” Paray said in a press re­lease yes­ter­day.

Not­ing that rivers and trib­u­taries in the Ma­yaro con­stituen­cy were all ex­treme­ly close to full ca­pac­i­ty, he said fur­ther rain­fall could cause an over­flow of river­banks.

He added, “The Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU) of Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is re­port­ing that these wa­ter chan­nels re­quire ur­gent clean­ing and main­te­nance. At St Ann’s East, the wa­ter is stag­nant and any rain­fall with­in the next few hours would lead to floods.”

He said home­own­ers and farm­ers con­tin­ue to lose prop­er­ty, food crops and live­stock.

“In some cas­es, home ap­pli­ances, beds, school­books, fur­ni­ture and oth­er es­sen­tials have been wrecked. The de­struc­tion of veg­eta­bles and farm an­i­mals has al­ready led to in­creased costs for con­sumers, many of whom are strug­gling to make ends meet,” he said.

Mean­while, over 200 homes were un­der wa­ter along the Pe­nal/Quinam Road in Pe­nal, with the wa­ter lev­el at waist height in some ar­eas and on­ly ac­ces­si­ble to heavy ve­hi­cles.

Fyz­abad was among the hard­est hit ar­eas.

Res­i­dent Vishram De­oroop told Guardian Me­dia that sev­er­al roads were im­pass­able but he had been walk­ing through the floods as­sist­ing res­i­dents.

“I came out to help oth­er vil­lagers and see what they could sal­vage,” he said.

An el­der­ly res­i­dent at Pluck Road, San Fran­cique, said she had no choice but to walk through the flood­wa­ters be­cause she need­ed gro­cery items.

In Wood­land, fish­er­men en­sured that they se­cured their boats at the New Cut Chan­nel, as the riv­er was al­most filled to ca­pac­i­ty.

Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ang­ie Jairam said the Gov­ern­ment must in­vest in in­fra­struc­ture to bring some re­lief for the fu­ture. Not­ing that some ar­eas in Fyz­abad were in need in­fra­struc­tur­al works, she said some res­i­dents in those ar­eas were ma­rooned since Tues­day night.

“Re­ports com­ing in that some have lost their valu­ables once again. With more rain ex­pect­ed, peo­ple are very frus­trat­ed at the mo­ment. We are in touch with our mem­bers and the gen­er­al com­mu­ni­ties to of­fer as­sis­tance with the coun­cil­lors,” she said.

Hope­ful that the Gov­ern­ment will im­me­di­ate­ly act to ease the res­i­dents’ pres­sures, she said so­cial ser­vices must help af­fect­ed res­i­dents with food and oth­er ne­ces­si­ties, in­clud­ing school sup­plies as many chil­dren lost their books and uni­forms.