The gov­ern­ment and the press be­have and have be­haved as though that when God sends rain which leads to flood­ing that it on­ly af­fects PNM sup­port­ers.

Big, big flood­ing in Las Lo­mas, Chin Chin, Kel­ly, Madras, St He­le­na, War­renville, Cunu­pia, Ca­roni, Pe­nal, Debe, Bar­rack­pore etc and the gov­ern­ment and the press have con­sis­tent­ly ig­nored the plight of the res­i­dents of these ar­eas.

I wit­nessed first­hand (this is not hearsay) where Coast Guard, Army, Po­lice, Fire and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion ve­hi­cles were go­ing to se­lec­tive (fam­i­ly, friends and ac­tivists) homes to ren­der as­sis­tance. It was nev­er a fair and non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ap­proach.

But where was the ODPM in all of this? It seems that this or­gan­i­sa­tion ON­LY gets in­volved af­ter the fact. The most dis­turb­ing is­sue, how­ev­er, is that the gov­ern­ment, the me­dia and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty be­have as though Green­vale and Orop­une are the on­ly ar­eas in T&T where tax­pay­ing (is that true?) cit­i­zens live and which are af­fect­ed by flood­ing.

Were it not for church, tem­ple, mosque, com­mu­ni­ty groups and busi­ness­men in the rest of Trinidad, the tax­pay­ing cit­i­zens of the oth­er ar­eas would have been worst off be­cause the state had failed them and con­tin­ues to do so.

Ram­c­hand Lutch­me­di­al

At­tor­ney-at-Law