Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan is as­sur­ing the pub­lic that all the pumps in­stalled to re­move flood­wa­ter from com­mu­ni­ties are ful­ly func­tion­al and “work­ing all the time.”

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence held by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi on Mon­day, Sinanan was firm in deny­ing that non-func­tion­ing pumps had been the main con­trib­u­tor to mul­ti­ple cas­es of flood­ing across the coun­try in re­cent days.

“The pumps are work­ing. We have no prob­lems with the pump. Ob­vi­ous­ly, I mean wa­ter is ris­ing and peo­ple are hop­ing that, look, we have pumps to pump this wa­ter out. But the vol­ume of wa­ter that we have is so much,” Sinanan said.

Sinanan al­so ad­dressed mem­bers of the pub­lic who con­tin­ue to say that flood­ing oc­curs every time it rains.

“I don’t know if that state­ment is cor­rect, that every time there is rain there is flood­ing across the coun­try.”

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, there has been a 180 per cent in­crease in rain­fall, al­so mark­ing this month as the wettest No­vem­ber record­ed in lo­cal his­to­ry.

So­cial me­dia posts cir­cu­lat­ed over the week­end, show­cas­ing flood vic­tims blam­ing pumps not be­ing turned on as the source of the prob­lem. In Bam­boo Set­tle­ment #2 yes­ter­day, res­i­dents were par­tic­u­lar­ly vo­cal about this, which Sinanan de­bunked.

“We have three pumps in Bam­boo #2 work­ing. Re­mem­ber, these are me­chan­i­cal pumps. So, yes­ter­day, they may have had an is­sue for about an hour…be­cause these pumps are go­ing sev­en, eight days straight, they had to shut down, one to change a belt. With­in an hour that one went back up and run­ning. They had an ad­di­tion­al pump op­er­at­ing,” Sinanan said.

He elab­o­rat­ed fur­ther, il­lus­trat­ing how neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties would have been af­fect­ed when the Ca­roni Riv­er over­flowed and said that it is all “just a nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­non.”

“The vol­ume of wa­ter we have is so much and the Ca­roni Riv­er is filled. We pump in­to the Ca­roni Riv­er. If the Ca­roni Riv­er is filled like that, then, you know there’s a lim­it as to how fast this wa­ter is go­ing to go out,” he said.

—An­ge­lo Je­didi­ah