For­mer Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion coun­cil­lor Wil­van Ram­lakhan has back­filled in­to the Nar­ine Per­sad Riv­er and erect­ed a wall and fence in the mid­dle of the riv­er bed.

This de­vel­op­ment, which oc­curred some months ago, is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Min­istry of Works and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA).

The en­tire riv­er had be­come a stag­nant pool of filth. On one side, back­fill­ing is tak­ing place on lands owned by Anand Ram­nar­i­nesingh, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Anand’s Low Price su­per­mar­ket.

Mounds of dirt were piled up on the riv­er re­serve and the riv­er had nar­rowed to about two feet with the fenced back­filled land in the cen­tre of the wa­ter­course. The riv­er was filled with plas­tic bot­tles and smelt of de­cay.

Lar­ry Sam­my, a res­i­dent of the area, said this was not the on­ly wa­ter­course in the Oropouche Basin which was back­filled.

“This is a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen,” he said, point­ing to the ex­ca­va­tion works on ei­ther side of the blocked riv­er. Sam­my said dur­ing the last rainy sea­son he lost over $50,000 worth of house­hold ar­ti­cles in floods.

“If it rains for half an hour, we will see a lot of floods here be­cause of what has hap­pened with this riv­er, “ he said.

Sam­my said he has writ­ten to the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion sev­er­al times to re­port the prob­lem.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Ronald Archi­lal, said: “The Min­istry must in­ter­vene quick­ly and ask them to de­sist from do­ing any fur­ther back­fill­ing on this riv­er.”

Works Min­is­ter Dr Ro­han Sinanan said a team from the Drainage Di­vi­sion and the EMA was in the area on yes­ter­day and is in­ves­ti­gat­ing. He said the Cor­po­ra­tion had the pow­er to stop il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties that af­fect the lives of thou­sands of peo­ple.

How­ev­er, chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my said the Cor­po­ra­tion had no au­thor­i­ty to act as the mat­ter is the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Drainage Di­vi­sion.

“We know there is an as­sault on our wa­ter­cours­es and 40 per cent of our re­gion falls in the Oropouche Drainage Basin. We have re­port­ed the mat­ter but the Min­istry is very slow to act on these re­ports,” he said.

Over the past few weeks, Guardian Me­dia has re­port­ed on back­fill­ing of the Coro­ma­ta Riv­er, Chi­nee­bass Chan­nel and the Bhag­ma­nia riv­er.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ram­lakhan said he pur­chased 8,500 square feet of land, four feet of which he lost to the riv­er.

Asked whether he had re­ceived per­mis­sion from the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the Min­istry of Works, Town and Coun­try or any oth­er agency, he said, “Go get your facts straight and come back to me. You can­not ques­tion me on that land.”

Pressed fur­ther, he said: “I have my bound­ary. When I bought it we sur­veyed it twice. About four feet of my land went back in­to the riv­er. I put a pick­et there and when I fenced, I fenced four feet in­side.”

Ram­lakhan added: “You have no knowl­edge of buy­ing and sell­ing land. I didn’t buy no riv­er. I bought 8,500 square feet of land. Go back and get your facts and then call me.”

He then hung up the phone.