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Friday, August 29, 2025

Minister: Errant developers must face brunt of law

by

1910 days ago
20200605
Works and Infrastructure Minister Rohan Sinanan , left, and  Drainage Superintendent with the Drainage Division Patterson Dick,look at the output of the pump, where the overflow was pumped into the Cunupia River at Cacandee Road, Felicity, yesterday.

Works and Infrastructure Minister Rohan Sinanan , left, and Drainage Superintendent with the Drainage Division Patterson Dick,look at the output of the pump, where the overflow was pumped into the Cunupia River at Cacandee Road, Felicity, yesterday.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Shas­tri Boodan

Peo­ple who en­gage in un­planned de­vel­op­ment should face the brunt of the law.

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said so yes­ter­day as he ad­dressed the me­dia while at the open­ing of a flood con­trol pump on the banks of the Cunu­pia Riv­er at Ca­can­dee Road, Fe­lic­i­ty, Ch­agua­nas.

Sinanan said un­planned de­vel­op­ment was con­tribut­ing im­mense­ly to the lev­el of flood­ing in T&T.

He said, "We have to do much more en­force­ment, be­cause what you do, you dis­place the wa­ter when you do that (re­fer­ring to un­planned de­vel­op­ment) and once you dis­place the wa­ter, you cre­ate flood­ing in a dif­fer­ent area, when the en­tire area was al­lowed to pond and spread out , now as you full you bring the wa­ter to one point."

He said flood­ing costs the tax pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars in grants and for­eign ex­change to re­place lost items.

The min­is­ter said his min­istry has been deal­ing with cas­es in south Trinidad where peo­ple are back­fill­ing wa­ter­cours­es to get an ad­di­tion­al three to four feet of land.

He said en­force­ment is nec­es­sary be­cause any in­fra­struc­ture put in place to mit­i­gate flood­ing would prove fu­tile un­less un­planned de­vel­op­ment is halt­ed.

He said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice is look­ing in­to fines for er­rant land de­vel­op­ers.

He added: "The en­force­ment, es­pe­cial­ly by the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, has to kick in now."

Sinanan said the project to get the pump run­ning in Fe­lic­i­ty be­gan in 2013 and was re­viewed and up­grad­ed in 2016. He said the pump is elec­tri­cal start­ing and would be able to push wa­ter at the rate of 100,000 gal­lons per minute.

He said the pump starts au­to­mat­i­cal­ly and does not need an in­di­vid­ual to mon­i­tor it and fill it with diesel, which was the case with the old one.

The min­is­ter said the fa­cil­i­ty cost $11.2 mil­lion. He said five pumps would be in­stalled in oth­er ar­eas and eight would be in­stalled in the next fi­nan­cial year.

He said the drainage di­vi­sion has tar­get­ed 400 pro­grammes that were di­vid­ed in­to four phas­es in Trinidad.

Sinanan said most ar­eas are in Phase Three while Phase Four is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed short­ly.

He said de­silt­ing of rivers were a part of this pro­gramme. How­ev­er, he said the on­set of the COVID-19 re­stric­tions de­layed the pro­gramme.

When asked if the tim­ing of hand­ing over the pump was po­lit­i­cal, Sinanan asked if he should hold back the pump un­til af­ter the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

He said the pump was hand­ed over re­cent­ly by the con­trac­tor and had to be com­mis­sioned in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

When asked if he was con­test­ing the San­gre Grande seat Sinanan said, "You nev­er could tell, San­gre Grande is open." How­ev­er, Sinanan said he is on the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee and did not seek any nom­i­na­tion.

Ch­agua­nas may­or Van­dana Mo­hit wel­comed the pump.

She said the pump would bring much need­ed re­lief to the peo­ple of cen­tral Trinidad.

She said burgess­es have been call­ing re­quest­ing their drains be cleaned. The may­or said work is ex­pect­ed to start next week at the Cunu­pia Riv­er and the Dyette Es­tate Rivers.

She said the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion would be us­ing its light equip­ment to clean var­i­ous chan­nels with pri­or­i­ty be­ing placed in ar­eas as Mostrose, En­deav­our, En­ter­prise and Cunu­pia. She said man­u­al clean­ing teams will al­so be dis­persed to clean mi­nor wa­ter­cours­es.


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