Shas­tri Boodan

Gov­ern­ment will spend $300 Mil­lion to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing this fi­nan­cial year. Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan al­so is­sued a warn­ing to per­sons il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing riverbeds that their days are num­bered.

Sinanan spoke with the me­dia on Sat­ur­day when he vis­it­ed de-silt­ing projects at the Hon­da and Ca­paro Rivers in Cen­tral.

He said in Cen­tral there are 132 projects to be com­plet­ed this year.

“It's a very ag­gres­sive drainage pro­gramme this year where the gov­ern­ment has agreed to com­mit close to $300 mil­lion on our drainage projects and we are far ad­vanced and try­ing to take full ad­van­tage of the dry sea­son.

Phase one is com­plet­ed and we are try­ing to com­plete phase 2 be­cause projects are done in dif­fer­ent phas­es. We are on track to com­plete our de­silt­ing pro­grammes and oth­er ma­jor riv­er clean­ing and main­te­nance pro­grammes with­in the fi­nan­cial year.”

Sinanan said work is go­ing on at all drainage di­vi­sions but pri­or­i­ty was giv­en to ar­eas that were hit the hard­est dur­ing the last rainy sea­son.

Sinanan said sev­er­al prob­lems are at­trib­uted to flood­ing in­clud­ing garbage in the wa­ter­cours­es, en­croach­ment on riv­er banks and en­croach­ment on the wa­ter cours­es.