Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the Gov­ern­ment will do its best to as­sist flood vic­tims but not all will be com­pen­sat­ed for their loss­es. She thanked God yes­ter­day that no lives were lost dur­ing Sat­ur­day's down­pour. She said sav­ing lives was a pri­or­i­ty. The Prime Min­is­ter be­gan her tour of af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties at 12.20 pm at Mar­aval in the vicin­i­ty of KFC along with sev­er­al mem­bers of her Cab­i­net, such as Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Em­manuel George.

Al­so on the tour were of­fi­cers from the T&T De­fence Force and the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter of Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM). The PM and her team met and greet­ed sev­er­al res­i­dents in La Sei­va, Eck­el Av­enue and Git­tens Road in Mar­aval, Dibe Road and Co­corite. Al­most four hours af­ter, she spoke to the me­dia for just un­der ten min­utes at Wa­ter­hole, Co­corite. Around 2.20 pm, the me­dia were told that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was tak­ing a short rest at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre be­fore re­sum­ing the tour at Dibe Road. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the rel­e­vant min­istries would con­duct as­sess­ments to homes and prop­er­ties "and see how best we can help with­in the frame­work that ex­ists."

She said: "I think it will be to­tal­ly fool­hardy of me and reck­less, should I say yes, every sin­gle per­son is go­ing to be com­pen­sat­ed. "Should we do that, there might not be a cent left in the Trea­sury," she added. She said the Gov­ern­ment will try to mit­i­gate loss­es. The PM said it was not her job to say whether there would be 100 per cent com­pen­sa­tion and that such a pro­nounce­ment had to come from the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment and oth­er agen­cies. "As­sist we will, and we shall," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. On May 27, 2010, just days af­ter lead­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship to a land­slide vic­to­ry in the gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar hur­ried­ly left the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny to tour flood-af­fect­ed ar­eas in east and cen­tral Trinidad.

She told re­porters then: "All we can do is of­fer im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance, re­lief, in terms of food, drink­ing wa­ter, a dry place to sleep." Yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed sym­pa­thy with peo­ple who "have lost so much." She said the reg­u­la­tion of build­ing and land de­vel­op­ment was vi­tal. "We can see to­day that that is a ma­jor fac­tor con­tribut­ing to what we are see­ing," she said. She said en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion was al­so im­por­tant and more strin­gent mea­sures were need­ed. The PM said Town and Coun­try Plan­ning "has not been Town and Coun­try Plan­ning" for more than 40 years. She said more strin­gent mea­sures were al­so need­ed in that di­vi­sion. She said: "Whilst we be­moan and we are very sad­dened at the dam­age done and the loss­es suf­fered by our fel­low cit­i­zens, I want to say thanks to God that we have not lost a life."

Many peo­ple were hap­py to see the PM and her team, while oth­ers were crit­i­cal. One uniden­ti­fied fe­male res­i­dent in Dibe Road said: "They eh do­ing noth­ing for we. "All that set of dra­ma. "Aun­ty Kam­la in town, on­ly cam­era ac­tion." In Co­corite, an el­der­ly woman hugged the PM prais­ing her ef­forts. A woman in a near­by par­lour said: "She is ah nice look­ing woman." Mem­bers of the De­fence Force, ODPM, CEPEP, T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, Flow and oth­er agen­cies were out in full force as­sist­ing with the clean up process. A CEPEP work­er on Eck­el Av­enue, Mar­aval, said he ar­rived on the scene at 7.30 am, and on Sat­ur­day night cleaned from 6 pm to 11 pm. One af­fect­ed fam­i­ly in La Sei­va lost an en­tire kitchen and a car was washed away in­to a near­by riv­er. Oth­er fam­i­lies' homes were cov­ered in sev­er­al feet of slush, while ap­pli­ances and fur­ni­ture, board games, toys and box­es of ce­re­al were staked in piles of mud.