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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Residents count losses after heavy rains cause floods in Cunupia

by

Shastri Boodan
345 days ago
20240801
Schoolboys play in the flood waters outside the Mon Plasir Road home on Thursday.

Schoolboys play in the flood waters outside the Mon Plasir Road home on Thursday.

Shastri Boodan

Shas­tri Boodan

Over 150 house­holds were af­fect­ed in some way by flood­ing in the Cunu­pia area on Thurs­day. Flood­wa­ters rose af­ter Wednes­day’s heavy down­pour, af­fect­ing nu­mer­ous ar­eas in the Mon Plaisir area,  dam­ag­ing res­i­dents' house­hold items, school sup­plies and even put one fash­ion de­sign­er out of busi­ness. 

Paras­ram Ja­groop, a fash­ion de­sign­er of Mon Plaisir Road, said he lost every­thing in­clud­ing his sewing shop.

"I nev­er get flood­ed here, first time I get flood­ed here," Ja­groop said. He is a pop­u­lar fig­ure in the com­mu­ni­ty and has de­signed gowns for many beau­ty queens.  Rasheed Mo­hammed had to use dirt to cre­ate a dirt em­bank­ment to keep the wa­ter out of his house. Mo­hammed said the wa­ters start­ed ris­ing around mid­day on Wednes­day, went down but came back again on Thurs­day.

Bal­matie Gosyne, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for  Las Lo­mas/ San Rafael in the Cou­va/ Tabaquite/ Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC), said a project to en­hance the flow of  Cunu­pia Riv­er was sup­posed to be com­plet­ed in the dry sea­son. How­ev­er, this project is still pend­ing and is con­tribut­ing to flood­ing in the area.

Gosyne said she would try to get re­lief to the res­i­dents. 

How­ev­er, she said the  CT­TRC has on­ly one work­ing cesspool pump truck.

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, Ro­han Sinanan, said the con­trac­tor do­ing re­pairs to the wall on the Cunu­pia Riv­er will be asked to speed up the project. Sinanan said work on the project had halt­ed be­cause of the in­clement weath­er that pre­vent­ed the cast­ing of con­crete slabs to com­plete the riv­er’s re­tain­ing wall. Sinanan said the works had got­ten off to a slow start ini­tial­ly be­cause the con­trac­tors had prob­lems ac­cess­ing the riv­er banks be­cause sev­er­al res­i­dents had en­croached on the land and were pre­vent­ing the con­trac­tor from get­ting to the prob­lem ar­eas.

Judy Ram­roop, whose prop­er­ty bor­ders the South­ern Main Road and the south­ern side of the riv­er said the con­trac­tors were not an­swer­ing any calls from her. Ram­roop said the riv­er is erod­ing her prop­er­ty which is now at risk of col­laps­ing. She said just over 12 years ago a re­tain­ing wall was con­struct­ed in the riv­er but it col­lapsed two years ago. Ram­roop said the con­trac­tor still has equip­ment on her prop­er­ty “This is the first time I am see­ing this height of wa­ter and now it's start­ing to un­der­mine the foun­da­tion.”

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