Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning has blamed squat­ters for con­tribut­ing to much of the floods which wreaked hav­oc in Pranz Gar­dens and sev­er­al parts of south Trinidad over the past few days.

Man­ning made the com­ment dur­ing a tour of flood-rav­aged ar­eas yes­ter­day.

The tour came a day af­ter of­fi­cials from the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) con­duct­ed an aer­i­al sur­vey of flood­ed ar­eas at Tu­na­puna, St Au­gus­tine, Bangladesh, Tabaquite, Clax­ton Bay and Cou­va. Dur­ing an in­ter­view at Lal­loo Trace, St Mar­garet's, Man­ning said the tour was be­ing done to as­sess whether emer­gency sys­tems had "kicked in­to place," af­ter the floods, caused by three days of heavy rain­fall.

"Right now we are mak­ing an as­sess­ment...This is first ma­jor event for the sea­son for us, and we here do­ing an as­sess­ment," she said.

"We are go­ing through the paces to see if the re­sponse has been do­ing well or if it has not done well. We are do­ing a rapid as­sess­ment of what has tak­en place in the last few days."

Asked what would be done af­ter the as­sess­ment, Man­ning said, "We will go back to the draw­ing board and see what has worked and what didn't work."

Re­gard­ing the caus­es of the floods, Man­ning said af­ter tour­ing Pranz Gar­dens it was ev­i­dent that squat­ters were to be blamed. "It seems squat­ting, the il­le­gal and ir­re­spon­si­ble oc­cu­pa­tion of land, has con­tributed to the floods," she said. "They are cut­ting away land in many of the ar­eas, and it is flow­ing in­to the wet­lands...The im­pact of the il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion of the land presents a prob­lem at this time." In ad­di­tion to il­le­gal land oc­cu­pa­tion, Man­ning said that some of the ar­eas, in­clud­ing St Mar­garet's were sit­u­at­ed in a basin and wa­ter was tak­ing a long time to run out. She al­so not­ed that there was poor drainage in sev­er­al ar­eas.

"We are look­ing at the clean­ing of drains in Ca­roni lands as well," Man­ning said. She said that dur­ing the tour, she planned to as­sess whether the mu­nic­i­pal bod­ies had func­tioned ef­fec­tive­ly. She said the Gov­ern­ment had been clean­ing drains and rivers in a bid to al­le­vi­ate floods. Mean­while, Min­is­ter of State in Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and co-or­di­na­tor of ODPM, Don­na Cox, said 150 ham­pers were dis­trib­uted to flood-strick­en fam­i­lies.

She al­so said that mat­tress­es were giv­en out while the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment al­so pro­vid­ed as­sis­tance for fam­i­lies. Mean­while, sev­er­al res­i­dents of Cres­cent Ex­ten­sion, St Mar­garet's, said poor drainage was con­tribut­ing to most to the heavy floods. Res­i­dent Azad Khan said drainage works were done re­cent­ly, but were left in­com­plete. He said that the prob­lem was ex­ac­er­bat­ed by clogged drains along Lal­too Trace.