Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young es­ti­mates that some 3,500 house­holds and be­tween 100,000 and 120,000 per­sons were af­fect­ed by flood­ing across T&T over the week­end.

Gov­ern­ment-led clean-up op­er­a­tions have be­gun in most com­mu­ni­ties across T&T that were dev­as­tat­ed by flood­ing.

Speak­ing at a joint press con­fer­ence at his Tem­ple Court of­fice in Port-of-Spain ear­li­er to­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said flood wa­ters had re­ced­ed in ar­eas of La Hor­quet­ta, St He­le­na, Ca­roni, Cunu­pia and San­gre Grande.

How­ev­er, Young said mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices were still per­form­ing res­cue op­er­a­tions in ar­eas of Mafek­ing, Ma­yaro, and Bam­boo Set­tle­ment, Val­sayn, as they were still un­der wa­ter.

"Some of the out­skirts are still af­fect­ed but most are not," Young said.

Young said staff and equip­ment from re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and Cepep were de­ployed in ar­eas where floods had re­ced­ed to as­sist cit­i­zens with clean-up ac­tiv­i­ty.

In terms of the Uri­ah Bul­ter High­way, which was im­pass­able in the stretch from the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary to just be­fore Munroe Road Fly­over head­ing south for most of the week­end, Young said the north­bound lane near to the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary was cleared and still be­ing used as a dual car­riage­way. He said the south­bound lane on­ly had a small amount of wa­ter and that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had opened it to high ve­hi­cles.

Young warned cit­i­zens liv­ing along Trinidad's east coast that about one to two kilo­me­tres of the Man­zanil­la-Ma­yaro Road was still un­der wa­ter.

Asked whether he no­ticed if riv­er lev­els had dropped dur­ing his aer­i­al tours of the af­fect­ed ar­eas, Young said yes.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that it was up to the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice to de­ter­mine if the coun­try's red-lev­el river­ine flood alert was to be lift­ed over the next few days.