RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA
and RISHARD KHAN

For the third time in as many weeks, res­i­dents of Tul­sa Trace, Pe­nal, bat­tled with floods that rose as high as three feet un­der their homes yes­ter­day.

Wad­ing through the floods out­side his home, Satish Ram­di­al said, “We fed up with this. We tired. We want some­thing to be done about this.”

 Ram­di­al said it was the third time in three weeks they have had to deal with floods.

“Right now, we can­not as­sess the dam­ages. We have to wait un­til the floods go down. We had to move out per­ma­nent­ly from down­stairs be­cause of how of­ten we get­ting floods. We can­not put any­thing down­stairs,” he said.

Asked what was the cause of the flood­ing, Ram­di­al said, “This start­ed to hap­pen af­ter they in­ter­fered with the sluice gates and when they start­ed to cut away at the riv­er banks.”

He said the dredg­ing works done by the min­istry had done more harm than good.

“Too many peo­ple with tech­ni­cal knowl­edge who do not know any­thing about the flow of the wa­ter come in here and tried to in­ter­fere with the wa­ter. Now, it is just a thin strip of bank hold­ing back that vol­ume of wa­ter,” Ram­di­al said.

A home at Tulsa Trace, Penal, flooded out after days of consistent rainfall.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

He added that the con­trac­tors who worked on the drainage around the pic­nic site in the com­mu­ni­ty did not com­plete dredg­ing works.

Mean­while, Ken­ny Seenath, 58, said he has lived in Tul­sa Trace since birth.

“First time this year we saw flood­ing in this part of the area. I am wor­ried that with more rain­fall, we will get more floods,” he said.

He added, “I didn’t sleep all night be­cause of the floods com­ing up. As soon as the rain starts falling we get fright­ened be­cause we know the floods com­ing. If we get a sub­stan­tial amount of rain­fall we have to brace for floods.”

Seenath said it usu­al­ly takes two or three weeks to clean up.

“The place al­ways smelling bad. The wa­ter didn’t get a chance to go right down and then we get this flood,” he said.

He al­so called for re­pairs to the sluice gates. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan said over $4 mil­lion was spent on dredg­ing works in the Oropouche Basin over the last fis­cal year to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing.