Gail Alexan­der

Ar­eas of block­age and breach­ing points are be­ing ad­dressed in Bam­boo No II and III, La Paille, Wood­land and oth­er ar­eas – and the Works Min­istry is seek­ing nec­es­sary ap­provals to dredge the mouth of the Ca­roni Riv­er in this fis­cal year.

This was among the in­for­ma­tion giv­en by Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan in re­ply to a stream of Op­po­si­tion queries in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, fol­low­ing re­cent dev­as­tat­ing floods across the coun­try.

Sinanan and Min­is­ters Don­na Cox (So­cial De­vel­op­ment) and Fos­ter Cum­mings (Youth De­vel­op­ment) re­spond­ed on a range of is­sues, from in­fra­struc­tur­al work to grants for res­i­dents af­fect­ed by floods and as­sis­tance for small busi­ness­es.

Op­po­si­tion MPs Rishi Seecher­an, Roodal Mooni­lal, Dave Tan­coo Van­dana Mo­hit, Rudy In­dars­ingh and oth­ers filed 13 ques­tions for Gov­ern­ment to an­swer about flood dam­age. Plus, UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein re­ceived per­mis­sion for Par­lia­ment to de­bate the flood­ing as a mat­ter of ur­gent na­tion­al im­por­tance last evening.

On what emer­gency clear­ing, clean­ing, de­silt­ing and dredg­ing works will be un­der­tak­en on the ma­jor riv­er cours­es, Sinanan said, “Dur­ing the pe­ri­od of ma­jor flood­ing, ac­tiv­i­ties and dredg­ing works are chal­leng­ing to un­der­take.”

He added, “At this time, ar­eas of block­age and breach­ing points are be­ing ad­dressed, for ex­am­ples, Bam­boo No II, III, La Paille, Wood­land and any oth­er area (where) re­me­di­al work has been iden­ti­fied.”

On an­oth­er query on the agen­da, on work to pre­vent fu­ture in­stances of flood­ing in St He­le­na, El Car­men, Kel­ly Vil­lage and en­vi­rons, Sinanan said, “The min­istry, via the Drainage Di­vi­sion, is at present work­ing on ac­quir­ing the nec­es­sary statu­to­ry ap­provals for the project to dredge the mouth of the Ca­roni Riv­er dur­ing this fis­cal year.

“The dredg­ing area will stretch from the Uri­ah But­ler High­way to the mouth of the riv­er at the Gulf of Paria.

“Oth­er pro­posed struc­tur­al works along the Ca­roni em­bank­ment are sched­uled to be un­der­tak­en in this fis­cal year un­der the Strate­gic Drainage Plan. These works are ex­pect­ed to bring re­lief to the ar­eas of St. He­le­na, El Car­men, Kel­ly Vil­lage and en­vi­rons.”