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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Ministry to go after people

who divert watercourses

by

1768 days ago
20200912
Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan stands at the edge of a watercourse at Ragoobar Lands, Gasparillo, during a tour of the area yesterday.

Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan stands at the edge of a watercourse at Ragoobar Lands, Gasparillo, during a tour of the area yesterday.

Kristian De Sliver

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan said the State will go af­ter peo­ple who dis­turb wa­ter­cours­es—a prac­tice he blames for re­cent floods in parts of Trinidad.Yes­ter­day, Sinanan and tech­ni­cal staff from the Works Min­istry ex­am­ined a wa­ter­course that was the source of flood­ing last week in Gas­par­il­lo. He said there will be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to re­ports that a for­mer MP and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port ap­proved a re­quest from a landown­er to di­vert the wa­ter­course. Once the tech­ni­cal team finds a breach and there are penal­ties, those re­spon­si­ble will have to pay, he said

Sinanan said the min­istry com­plet­ed de­silt­ing of more than 400 wa­ter­cours­es across the coun­try. De­spite the vol­ume of rain­fall in the past few weeks, there were no breach­es of rivers, and once the rain stopped, the wa­ter lev­els de­creased quick­ly.

In the com­mu­ni­ties of Gas­par­il­lo, Lopinot/Bon Air and Mal­oney where there were floods, block­ages were the rea­sons.
“Flood­ing has a lot to do with the ca­pac­i­ty of the chan­nels and the vol­ume of rain that we get at any point in time. We al­so found a lot of change in the way the rain is falling, where you have ma­jor down­pour con­cen­trat­ed in cer­tain ar­eas. That does not help if we have block­ages in the chan­nels,” Sinanan said.

“So it is a new norm, the new weath­er pat­terns, and it has to do with the vol­ume of rain and the ca­pac­i­ty of the chan­nels. While we work on those prob­lems in the short, medi­um and long term, we do need the sup­port from the cit­i­zens in terms of not block­ing the wa­ter­cours­es and not di­vert­ing the chan­nels. That has a sig­nif­i­cant role to play in the floods that we are get­ting.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that peo­ple built struc­tures on riv­er banks and back­filled on­to riv­er re­serves and wa­ter­course, he said the Works Min­istry is part­ner­ing with the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the var­i­ous mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.
“We are now ramp­ing up the en­force­ment in these ar­eas. This morn­ing I came to see first-hand yet an­oth­er is­sue where some­body di­vert­ed a wa­ter­course, blocked a chan­nel, re­duced the ca­pac­i­ty, and that re­sult­ed in vast flood­ing of the wa­ter­course. It is easy to say well ‘they did not clean the wa­ter­course, and they did not do this, they did not do that’.”

Sher­iff Mo­hammed, who has lived on Glen An­drews Cir­cu­lar for al­most 38 years, said the floods on­ly start­ed when a landown­er en­croached on the riv­er with a wall. Mo­hammed said the landown­er built the wall two years ago and since then, the wa­ter keeps com­ing up. Last week, the floods came high­er. He said each time rain falls it af­fects the two com­mu­ni­ties the riv­er pass­es through.
“When they were do­ing the wall the MP and every­body came and they al­lowed him to fin­ish the wall. It is the re­sult we are get­ting every time the rain falls. As soon as rain falls, we are flood­ing out,” he said.

Re­cent­ly elect­ed Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes said fol­low­ing the floods last Thurs­day, they wrote to the Min­istry for help to deal with drainage. Haynes said this kind of floods should not be al­lowed to hap­pen again. She is seek­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istry and the res­i­dents to en­sure there is mit­i­ga­tion to pre­vent fur­ther floods.


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