SHAS­TRI BOODAN

May­or of Ch­agua­nas, Faaiq Mo­hammed, is call­ing on the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to car­ry out works im­me­di­ate­ly on a re­tain­ing wall that he warns is re­strict­ing the flow of the Cunu­pia Riv­er.

May­or Mo­hammed said on Sat­ur­day, the wall lo­cat­ed near the South­ern Main Road start­ed shift­ing be­cause of the heavy wa­ter flow and nar­rowed the wa­ter­course from al­most 10 me­tres in width to one me­tre.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ch­agua­nas May­or, this caused wa­ter to back up and re­sult­ed in flood­ing in Madras Road and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. 

Mani­ram Seep­er­sad who lives next to the riv­er start­ed dis­man­tling a shed that is con­nect­ed to his house. Seep­er­sad said he fears the wall may col­lapse and pull parts of his house con­nect­ed to the shed in­to the riv­er. 

The back of Maniram Seepersad's house is collapsing. [Image by SHASTRI BOODAN]

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Seep­er­sad told Guardian Me­dia the wall has been shift­ing for the last two years.  He said he made re­ports to the Min­istry of Works who promised to as­sess the site.  He says, how­ev­er, they nev­er ar­rived be­fore the re­cent cri­sis.

On Wednes­day, of­fi­cials from the Works Min­istry were on the scene but de­clined to speak with the Me­dia. 

"Last night this wall dropped,” Seep­er­sad said.  “We have been putting sand­bags—500 sand­bags to pre­vent the wa­ter from seep­ing un­der the build­ing.  That didn't help much be­cause we had a whole month or rain."

A sign with the word ‘DISASTER’ has been erected at the river’s bridge to warn of the impact of the shifting retaining wall. [Image by SHASTRI BOODAN]

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An­oth­er res­i­dent, Sher­win Lu­cas, told Guardian Me­dia one of the res­i­dents near the riv­er kept back­fill­ing and caused the riv­er to move.

How­ev­er, Seep­er­sad main­tains the re­tain­ing wall was built us­ing shod­dy ma­te­ri­als and poor con­struc­tion.  He said be­cause of this, the wall kept slip­ping with the pas­sage of time. 

May­or Mo­hammed said un­less the wall is re­moved or re­paired, it would cause the wa­ter to flow at a slow­er rate and gen­er­ate flood­ing in com­mu­ni­ties east of the dis­as­ter, when­ev­er the heavy rains hit these com­mu­ni­ties.