SHAS­TRI BOODAN

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John has de­scribed the wide­spread prac­tice of dump­ing in wa­ter­cours­es a “na­tion­al emer­gency”.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day dur­ing a tour of out­fall drains in her Cou­va North con­stituen­cy, the min­is­ter stressed the ur­gent need for main­te­nance works ahead of the rainy sea­son.

Min­is­ter John not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment may need to in­tro­duce more pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns to dis­cour­age cit­i­zens from be­com­ing "lit­ter bugs". She high­light­ed pol­lu­tion as a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to flood­ing across the coun­try.

“In Port-of-Spain, re­cent­ly we had a video, big drums, wardrobes, stoves and cloth­ing etc. In ad­di­tion, we have all the bot­tles, the plas­tic bot­tles strewn every­where,” she said.

Re­fer­ring to re­cent clean-up ef­forts, Min­is­ter John not­ed that the Randy Carter Bridge in her con­stituen­cy had been re­cent­ly cleared.

“I am hop­ing that peo­ple will be civic mind­ed and re­spon­si­ble not to dump. It’s a na­tion­al emer­gency with peo­ple dump­ing, be­cause it ends up in the wa­ter course and the sea and we have all this pol­lu­tion,” she added.

The Works Min­is­ter re­vealed that her min­istry is work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) to clear wa­ter chan­nels, par­tic­u­lar­ly those run­ning through aban­doned sug­ar cane fields pre­vi­ous­ly main­tained by Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed be­fore the ces­sa­tion of sug­ar pro­duc­tion in 2003.

She em­pha­sised the hu­man cost of flood­ing,

"When floods hit peo­ple, it’s ter­ri­ble,” she ob­served. “Every­thing just floats away and then they don’t have in­sur­ance and they them­selves have to find ways and the means to re­place their stove, fridge and the bed, it’s a ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion."

Min­is­ter John said all gov­ern­ment min­istries are cur­rent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing on flood mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies. While pri­vate con­trac­tors have of­fered as­sis­tance, she con­firmed that none of these of­fers have been ac­cept­ed as yet.

“As it is now, the Min­istry of Works and [the Min­istry of] Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, we have been man­ag­ing. We have been ag­gres­sive and with our flood mit­i­ga­tion, there has not been any over­whelm­ing of the sys­tem at this time. What is hap­pen­ing here is proac­tive be­hav­iour,” she stat­ed.

The min­is­ter added that the min­istry has be­gun widen­ing drains to im­prove wa­ter flow.

Along the East-West Cor­ri­dor, for in­stance, sev­er­al drains have been ex­pand­ed from four to sev­en me­tres. How­ev­er, she point­ed out that some prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ments have ob­struct­ed fur­ther widen­ing of cer­tain wa­ter­cours­es.

CT­TRC Chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad al­so weighed in, stat­ing that the ne­glect of key wa­ter­cours­es has caused sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing and loss­es to many res­i­dents in Cen­tral Trinidad.