Ch­agua­nas May­or, Faaiq Mo­hammed, is blam­ing the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion for the per­sis­tent flood­ing which oc­curs in the bor­ough.

Yes­ter­day, flood­ing was re­port­ed in sev­er­al ar­eas in cen­tral Trinidad, in­clud­ing Ch­agua­nas.

Coun­cil­lor for Char­lieville Adri­an Ali said that Ak­bar Trace was ren­dered im­pass­able around mid­day due to se­vere flood­ing. Mo­torists were ad­vised to seek al­ter­na­tive routes.

Ali at­trib­uted the sit­u­a­tion to a drain to the side of the high­way.

“Thank­ful­ly, the new Gov­ern­ment has al­ready be­gun ad­dress­ing these long-stand­ing is­sues,” Ali said. “The Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Works is aware, and a co­or­di­nat­ed na­tion­al drainage plan is cur­rent­ly be­ing rolled out. It will take time, but af­ter a decade of ne­glect, we’re fi­nal­ly see­ing re­al com­mit­ment and ac­tion.”

Char­lieville res­i­dent Sunil Gun­pat, 41, who lives near the Cunu­pia Riv­er, said he was wor­ried the riv­er would burst its banks. He said even though the riv­er was dredged two months ago, the em­bank­ment has since start­ed to erode, which could be dan­ger­ous for his broth­er-in-law and oth­er rel­a­tives.

“We’re very wor­ried about the sit­u­a­tion,” Gun­pat said.

Speak­ing in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, May­or Mo­hammed placed blame on the PNM, ac­cus­ing the par­ty, which was in gov­ern­ment for 10 years, of not in­vest­ing in crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

“The chal­lenges we are now fac­ing—par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to flood­ing and in­ad­e­quate drainage in­fra­struc­ture—were not on­ly fore­see­able but sad­ly, in­evitable,” Mo­hammed said. “Years of un­der­in­vest­ment and a lack of con­sis­tent main­te­nance have left many com­mu­ni­ties vul­ner­a­ble to even mod­er­ate rain­fall.”

He added that the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU) was on high alert, ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor­ing con­di­tions and prepar­ing sand­bags for res­i­dents in flood-prone ar­eas.