Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va 

Pe­nal res­i­dents protest­ed yes­ter­day, ac­cus­ing a pen­sion­er of di­vert­ing a ma­jor riv­er and putting their homes at risk of flood­ing.

The demon­stra­tors con­front­ed pen­sion­er Ajod­ha Pooran, who claimed he spent $150,000 to al­ter the course of the Black Wa­ter Chan­nel, a trib­u­tary of the South Oropouche Riv­er, in an at­tempt to stop ero­sion near his prop­er­ty. How­ev­er, res­i­dents ar­gued that his ac­tions could wors­en flood­ing in the sur­round­ing ar­eas.

Res­i­dent Michelle Ramdeo said the Batchya re­gion al­ready ex­pe­ri­ences se­vere flood­ing, and the riv­er di­ver­sion could bring even more dev­as­ta­tion.

“We are watch­ing the skies, and we are very anx­ious and wor­ried. We have ex­pe­ri­enced floods in this area, and now that the riv­er has been di­vert­ed,  we ex­pect even more floods,” Ramdeo said.

Farmer Dhani­ram Latch­man al­so ex­pressed con­cern for his live­stock.

“I al­ready lost a few an­i­mals in floods in the past, and now that they have done this to the riv­er, we are all wor­ried,” he said. He called on the rel­e­vant agen­cies to in­ves­ti­gate and fix the wa­ter­course back to its orig­i­nal flow.

Dur­ing the protest, res­i­dents al­so met with Oropouche West MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj, de­mand­ing ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion. 

Both Tan­coo and Ma­haraj told Pooran that his at­tempts to di­vert the riv­er were il­le­gal.

Tan­coo said un­reg­u­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment has sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributed to flood­ing is­sues in the area.

“When peo­ple take mat­ters in­to their own hands with­out prop­er en­gi­neer­ing over­sight, the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty suf­fers,” he stat­ed.

Pooran ad­mit­ted that he did not seek or ob­tain writ­ten ap­proval from the Min­istry of Works be­fore di­vert­ing the trib­u­tary, which is a main out­flow from the South Oropouche drainage basin.

He said, though, the work was need­ed ur­gent­ly.

“Right now the riv­er is 50 feet away from my house. Every time the am­phib­ian ex­ca­va­tor comes to go in­to the riv­er, it widens the riv­er. Ban­dits swam across the riv­er and robbed men but no­body cares about that,” he said.

Pooran de­nied the di­ver­sion of the riv­er would cause flood­ing say­ing he was widen­ing it from eight feet to 10 feet.

“I am clean­ing the riv­er and di­vert­ing it so it will flow bet­ter. This will not af­fect any­body. No­body is af­fect­ed. I am chang­ing the course of the riv­er to save my home, my fruit trees and my an­i­mals. I am not block­ing the wa­ter­course. I am re-rout­ing the riv­er, mak­ing it bet­ter than it is right now,” he added.

He not­ed that if the au­thor­i­ties at­tempt­ed to stop the project, he did not plan to com­ply.

“I am on my land, and I am not in­ter­fer­ing with any­body. I have umpteen rea­sons to change the wa­ter­course,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan said he did not have the specifics of the riv­er di­ver­sion, stat­ing that he was await­ing a re­port from the Drainage Di­vi­sion.

He said his min­istry would as­sess the sit­u­a­tion be­fore tak­ing ac­tion. 

“We are await­ing a re­port on the mat­ter. Once we re­ceive it, we will de­ter­mine the next steps,” Sinanan said.