Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The mere men­tion of rain­fall in Bam­boo #2 is enough to re­trau­ma­tise res­i­dents still reel­ing from the in­un­da­tion of 2022. 

With wide eyes and out­stretched hands, res­i­dent Prem­nath Dookoo told Guardian Me­dia, that his heart can­not take a re­cur­rence. For 50 years, Dookoo lived on Mo­han Street, the first seg­ment of homes to be af­fect­ed once the riv­er to its south burst its banks. 

“When I see the rain set up now, I does just quake, be­cause the last flood I get I lost every­thing,” the el­der­ly man said. 

Ex­as­per­at­ed by the mere thought of fur­ther floods, Dookoo con­tin­ued, “Bam­boo not ready for an­oth­er flood at all, but if it comes, we will have to go with the flow and just swim in it.” 

Liv­ing mere feet from the river­bank, Bin­di Siew­dath said she had al­ready moved her be­long­ings to high­er ground. She said the cy­cle of de­struc­tion and then state com­pen­sa­tion was grow­ing tire­some and in­ad­e­quate. 

“I can’t do this again, I can’t lose my fridge, I can’t lose my couch; ac­tu­al­ly, I don’t have a couch or cup­board since the last flood. I can’t af­ford to buy back a cup­board be­cause they (the State) say that is a lux­u­ry item. I can’t buy an­oth­er wash­ing ma­chine be­cause, ap­par­ent­ly, that is a lux­u­ry item. The $10,000 that they giv­ing you, it not help­ing; my fridge and stove cost more than that,” she ex­plained. 

Bob Dookoo, mean­while, said his fam­i­ly’s clothes were al­ready in plas­tic bags, await­ing the worst. 

“We get scared be­cause I lost every­thing in 2018 and the com­pen­sa­tion was very small. I have my fam­i­ly pack­ing bags and if the flood comes, we will just go to San Juan and stay be­cause we can’t go through this no more, too much pres­sure,” he said. 

Walk­ing with Guardian Me­dia along the river­bank to the west­ern side of the com­mu­ni­ty, Ra­j­nauth Lall de­clared that spot “the most dan­ger­ous area in Bam­boo.” 

With the river­bank’s width at on­ly two feet to pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty from the St Joseph Riv­er, Lall lament­ed that they were one tor­ren­tial rain­fall away from hav­ing to evac­u­ate. 

“This is not go­ing to last. Last time wa­ter spilled over from the riv­er, we had six min­utes to get to high­er ground—it was very very dan­ger­ous. A con­tract was award­ed to a com­pa­ny to do work here and we have not seen any ma­chines on the bank. Since the be­gin­ning of June, they had the con­tract,” Lall said. 

Some me­tres away at the com­mu­ni­ty’s pump, which is an es­sen­tial tool to get flood wa­ters out of the vil­lage, there was some good news and some bad. 

While res­i­dents were thank­ful that the pump had been raised and put on a plat­form, en­sur­ing that flood wa­ters would not get in­to it, which could re­sult in a mal­func­tion, Rishi Sookram, who lives a stone’s throw away, said an­oth­er is­sue aris­es. 

“One of the main things they need to look at, from Tem­ple Street to the pump, all the ac­cess drains to this area are com­plete­ly blocked. They do not come near to the pump every time they are clean­ing drains. When the drains are clogged, the pump can­not get the flood wa­ter and it just sucks up air and wastes time,” Sookram com­plained. 

The lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor for the area, Seema Ram­saran-Au­gus­tine, said she was grow­ing in­creas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed by these is­sues, which she said should have been ad­dressed in the dry sea­son. 

Ram­saran-Au­gus­tine said there were more is­sues with the pump aside from the clogged drains. 

“They still have not in­stalled the lines to the pump; they said some com­pa­ny is weld­ing the lines. On­ly the mo­bile pump is there, but I don’t know why it is tak­ing so long to in­stall the lines. They com­mit­ted to do­ing it but no spe­cif­ic tim­ing,” Ram­saran-Au­gus­tine said. 

With re­spect to the nar­row riv­er bank, the coun­cil­lor said it had been two months since the project was award­ed to a con­trac­tor and to date noth­ing had been done. 

“I al­ways li­aise with the drainage su­per­in­ten­dent. The frus­trat­ing part is that they can’t an­swer me; they don’t seem to know them­selves. I am not blam­ing the pub­lic ser­vants, but for ex­am­ple, the main drains in Bam­boo #2 be­long to the Min­istry of Works but they said they have not got­ten fund­ing to get it done. Up to Thurs­day I asked them about it, but they said they are await­ing fund­ing,” she re­vealed. 

But Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan told Guardian Me­dia that the con­trac­tor is do­ing sur­veys on the riv­er bank in ques­tion. He ex­pects the is­sue to be ad­dressed with­in a month or two. Re­gard­ing the pump house, the min­is­ter said he ex­pects all work on it to be com­plet­ed be­fore the end of the fi­nan­cial year (be­fore Sep­tem­ber). He added that mo­bile pumps are op­er­a­tional and in place in case of emer­gen­cies. Sinanan said a lot of work has gone in­to prepar­ing Bam­boo #2 for ad­verse weath­er and flood­ing.