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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Penal, Barrackpore residents remain marooned as floods linger

by

361 days ago
20240719

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Flood­wa­ters lin­gered in Pe­nal and Bar­rack­pore yes­ter­day, leav­ing res­i­dents anx­ious and fear­ful as over­cast skies brought fur­ther wor­ries. Many re­mained ma­rooned in their homes in places like Kan­hai Trace North, Sam­my West Trace, Pe­nal, and parts of Rochard Road, which were still un­der­wa­ter.

When the Guardian vis­it­ed the area, Glo­ry Chan­darb­han and her hus­band, Bholchan, sat in the up­stairs part of their Rochard Dou­glas home. Bholchan said they could not start to clean be­cause of the wa­ter.

“We cop­ing re­al hard be­cause you can’t come out, can’t do noth­ing, can­not clean out,” Chan­darb­han said. “It have plen­ty snakes, scor­pi­ons, in­sects, rats, and plen­ty of rats which came through the flood. Six or sev­en snakes we saw down­stairs.”

Glo­ry, who has stage four can­cer, said she felt hope­less. “I am afraid. Be­cause of how I am sick, I can­not walk, and we saw a lot of snakes and scor­pi­ons in the wa­ter,” she lament­ed.

At Kan­hai Trace North, an­oth­er res­i­dent, Ramdeo Ram­sawak, was afraid. “Right now the wa­ter dropped a lit­tle, but watch the skies. We are sure to get more rain soon,” he said.

Ram­sawak al­so said they were wait­ing for the flood­wa­ters to re­cede be­fore they could as­sess how bad­ly they were af­fect­ed. Un­der an­oth­er res­i­dent’s house, dead duck­lings were seen. At a mosque in Bar­rack­pore, vol­un­teers were fi­nal­ly able to start clean­ing. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive said the wa­ters rose more than four feet on Wednes­day.

Mean­while, the chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Gow­tam Ma­haraj, said they re­ceived 45 dis­tress calls. Thir­ty of these house­hold­ers re­ceived aid yes­ter­day. Ma­haraj said 15 more fam­i­lies will re­ceive aid to­day. “We dis­trib­uted over 3,000 sand­bags over the past few days, and we have been vis­it­ing the fam­i­lies and pro­vid­ing ham­pers, mat­tress­es and oth­er sup­plies,” he said.

Ma­haraj stressed the ur­gent need for a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to tack­le the flood­ing is­sues since clogged rivers were a ma­jor fac­tor. Re­gard­ing il­le­gal land de­vel­op­ment and in­dis­crim­i­nate back­fill­ing, which res­i­dents claimed al­so con­tribute to floods, Ma­haraj said, “We are ex­am­in­ing the ar­eas where im­prove­ments are need­ed due to im­prop­er back­fill­ing. We will ad­dress these is­sues by pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions through the rel­e­vant agen­cies.”

Ma­haraj al­so men­tioned that heavy equip­ment will be used to clear wa­ter­cours­es once the flood­wa­ters re­cede.

He said the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment team has been on the ground, as­sist­ing af­fect­ed res­i­dents.

Ma­haraj once again called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­lease the $21 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed in the last fis­cal bud­get for de­vel­op­men­tal projects, em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of time­ly in­ter­ven­tion to pre­vent fu­ture floods.


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