Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty has be­gun a se­ries of clean-up and de­silt­ing ex­er­cis­es across the coun­try to mit­i­gate flood­ing ahead of the rainy sea­son, ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath.

Padarath spoke on Wednes­day with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the launch of an ex­er­cise in Dow Vil­lage, Cal­i­for­nia, Cen­tral Trinidad. The ini­tia­tive forms part of a broad­er, co­or­di­nat­ed ef­fort in­volv­ing WASA, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture.

“This is a con­tin­u­a­tion from sev­er­al con­stituen­cies where we first start­ed a few weeks ago in Barataria/San Juan,” Padarath said. “WASA is part­ner­ing through the equip­ment and per­son­nel that they have, work­ing along­side re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and con­stituen­cies to as­sist in de­silt­ing and clean-up ef­forts ahead of the rainy sea­son.”

He said the pro­gramme tar­gets flood-prone com­mu­ni­ties, with crews clear­ing wa­ter­cours­es and drains that are fre­quent­ly af­fect­ed dur­ing pe­ri­ods of heavy rain­fall.

“This morn­ing we moved in­to the con­stituen­cy of Cou­va South, where there are sev­er­al ar­eas usu­al­ly im­pact­ed by flood­ing. Over the next cou­ple of weeks, we will con­tin­ue work­ing to bring some mea­sure of re­lief by de­silt­ing our wa­ter­cours­es and drains and tar­get­ing ar­eas with an­nu­al flood­ing,” he said.

Padarath said key ar­eas such as Bu­ca­roo, Bal­main, Cal­cut­ta and Dow Vil­lage have al­ready been iden­ti­fied for in­ter­ven­tion. In ad­di­tion to clear­ing drains, the ex­er­cise al­so ad­dress­es long­stand­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues.

“We are al­so un­der­tak­ing some ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture work, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas where leaks oc­cur due to WASA’s old and di­lap­i­dat­ed pipelines, which are be­ing ad­dressed at the same time,” he added.

He said the ini­tia­tive re­lies heav­i­ly on WASA’s spe­cialised equip­ment, in­clud­ing vac­u­um units and gul­ly suck­ers, which crews are de­ploy­ing in com­mu­ni­ties most vul­ner­a­ble to flood­ing.

Padarath said the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture is col­lab­o­rat­ing with WASA to iden­ti­fy prob­lem ar­eas across con­stituen­cies and max­imise the use of avail­able re­sources.

“We are work­ing hand in hand with the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture to iden­ti­fy chal­lenges ahead of the rainy sea­son and utilise WASA’s equip­ment when it is not en­gaged in oth­er projects,” Padarath said.

The clean-up cam­paign, which be­gan in Barataria/San Juan, has since ex­pand­ed to Siparia and Cou­va South, with ad­di­tion­al con­stituen­cies ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit in the com­ing weeks.