Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Amidst pleas from Op­po­si­tion Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment for the Works Min­istry to do more to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan yes­ter­day re­mind­ed them that even the Sa­hara Desert is now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing flood­ing.

Dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) stage yes­ter­day, it was re­vealed that the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port had been al­lo­cat­ed $4 mil­lion for clear­ing ma­jor rivers. This is $1.4m less than the last fis­cal’s al­lo­ca­tion.

In ex­plain­ing some of the work to be done, Sinanan ex­plained, “We are ac­tu­al­ly now clean­ing the mouth of the Ca­roni Riv­er, which is a ma­jor project be­ing un­der­tak­en. That has not been done for quite a long time. Drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion is one pro­gramme that we have and we have sev­er­al projects com­ing out of the Ca­roni Riv­er un­der dif­fer­ent projects.”

Sinanan added that four rivers had been iden­ti­fied for clear­ing and promised the Op­po­si­tion to pro­vide the de­tails in writ­ing.

But Cou­va North MP Ravi Rati­ram sought to re­mind the min­is­ter that the La Que­sa Riv­er in his con­stituen­cy was threat­en­ing sev­er­al homes near its banks.

“I just want to put in a plea on be­half of my con­stituents in Bank Vil­lage and Or­ange Field Road, where their homes are be­ing threat­ened by the ero­sion,” Rati­ram said.

He said flood­ing had wors­ened since the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) came back in­to of­fice in 2015.

“So, we are plead­ing, plead­ing once more, be­cause the flood­ing we ex­pe­ri­ence in the con­stituen­cy is a re­cur­ring dec­i­mal since this ad­min­is­tra­tion has come in­to of­fice and we are hop­ing that some ad­di­tion­al ef­fort can be put in­to clear­ing these wa­ter cours­es and not piece­meal clean­ing of the riv­er it­self,” Rati­ram said.

“Am I sup­posed to re­spond to that?” Sinanan asked com­mit­tee chair Bridgid An­nisette-George.

When she in­di­cat­ed that the choice was his, the min­is­ter sought to de­fend his staff and the PNM’s track record in flood mit­i­ga­tion.

“I want to com­pli­ment the Drainage De­part­ment of the Min­istry of Works, who have been do­ing yeo­man ser­vice over the last cou­ple of years. We have done more drainage work based on the records in the min­istry in the his­to­ry of this coun­try,” Sinanan said.

He then sought to re­mind the Op­po­si­tion MPs that flood­ing was not on­ly a T&T is­sue.

“Yes, there have been chal­lenges with flood­ing, but we have to take that in­to con­text of what is hap­pen­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, be­cause in Trinidad and To­ba­go so far, we have been do­ing well. There is no guar­an­tee we will get away from what is hap­pen­ing. If you look at the news­pa­per to­day and last week, the Sa­hara Desert is un­der wa­ter.

“So, we are see­ing flood­ing in the deserts of the world. I don’t think the low-ly­ing ar­eas in Trinidad will be spared of that,” Sinanan ar­gued.

Dur­ing the SFC, it was al­so re­vealed that $5m would be al­lo­cat­ed to up­grade drainage pumps and flood gates.