Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Al­though Trinidad and To­ba­go has been down­grad­ed to a Green Lev­el weath­er alert, sev­er­al parts of the coun­try con­tin­ue to grap­ple with lin­ger­ing flood­wa­ters fol­low­ing per­sis­tent show­ery ac­tiv­i­ty over the week­end.

How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters are as­sur­ing the pub­lic that a co­or­di­nat­ed, mul­ti-agency re­sponse re­mains in ef­fect, with on­go­ing ef­forts to mit­i­gate dam­age and pro­vide re­lief to af­fect­ed and vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

Flood­wa­ters in­un­dat­ed farms and gar­dens in Aranguez, San Juan, up to yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Dev­as­tat­ed farmer Bob­by Ram­lo­gan ap­pealed to au­thor­i­ties for im­me­di­ate sup­port and long-term so­lu­tions. He said re­cent rain­fall had wiped out his toma­to crop, leav­ing fields un­der wa­ter.

“Every­thing flood­ed out,” Ram­lo­gan said, stand­ing near wa­ter­logged rows of pro­duce.

“Thou­sands of dol­lars in crops—gone. I un­der­stand the min­is­ter vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, so I hope some­thing will come out of that.”

Like many farm­ers in cen­tral and north­ern Trinidad, Ram­lo­gan was se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the heavy rains. How­ev­er, he said he be­lieves poor main­te­nance made a bad sit­u­a­tion worse.

“A lot of the drains weren’t cleaned for a while. That’s what caused the wa­ter to back up and leak in. That con­tributed to the flood­ing,” he said.

He al­so point­ed to mal­func­tion­ing in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing a non-work­ing sluice gate and in­op­er­a­tive pumps.

“The gate hasn’t been work­ing for some time, and the pumps we do have down there well, they’re not func­tion­ing right now.”

With his en­tire crop de­stroyed, Ram­lo­gan said he has no choice but to wait un­til the dry sea­son.

“There’s noth­ing un­til next year. We’ll spray the land and keep it clean dur­ing the rainy sea­son and hope we don’t get flood­ed again”, he said.

His mes­sage to the au­thor­i­ties was clear, “Come and fix the gate. Not just for me, but for all the farm­ers. Help us so this doesn’t keep hap­pen­ing.”

Aranguez South Farm­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Jai Singh told Guardian Me­dia that the area has been ne­glect­ed for the last nine years and not much was done for farm­ers.

He said, “This is time for all the is­sues to be re­solved and gates and pumps need to be fixed.”

Singh said the as­so­ci­a­tion had con­tact­ed the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the min­is­ter had con­tact­ed them so that an as­sess­ment could start in or­der to as­sist them.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said mo­bil­i­sa­tion be­gan im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­struct­ed all min­is­ters to “have boots on the ground” over the week­end. She said the min­istry launched a ro­bust flood mit­i­ga­tion pro­gramme through re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and dis­as­ter units, us­ing equip­ment and man­pow­er to clear wa­ter­cours­es and sup­port af­fect­ed ar­eas.

“By the time the Yel­low Alert came in, we were al­ready on the ground,” Ameen said.

“It’s a mon­u­men­tal task to fix 10 years of ne­glect in two weeks, but we are ready, and we are work­ing.”

She al­so urged res­i­dents to be proac­tive, not­ing that sand­bags re­main avail­able at all re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John al­so yes­ter­day con­firmed that her min­istry had been ac­tive­ly man­ag­ing flood-re­lat­ed chal­lenges through the Drainage and High­ways Di­vi­sions.

“We are mon­i­tor­ing high-risk com­mu­ni­ties and work­ing with re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions on im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tions,” John said in a me­dia re­lease.

Com­mu­ni­ties that re­mained un­der ac­tive sur­veil­lance and in­ter­ven­tion yes­ter­day in­clud­ed Ari­ma, San­gre Grande, Ch­agua­nas, Ca­roni, Diego Mar­tin, Pe­nal Rock Road, La For­tune Pluck Road, and Su­chit Trace.

With un­pre­dictable weath­er fore­cast for the Wet Sea­son, both min­is­ters re­it­er­at­ed their com­mit­ment to build­ing na­tion­al flood re­silience. How­ev­er, for res­i­dents and farm­ers like Ram­lo­gan, the de­mand re­mains the same: fix the in­fra­struc­ture—and fix it fast.