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.