Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, led by the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen, were on the ground yes­ter­day, as over 40 re­ports of flood­ing, land­slips and fall­en trees were re­ceived across Trinidad.

An ad­verse weath­er alert, which came in­to ef­fect on Sat­ur­day and was ex­pect­ed to end yes­ter­day evening, was ex­tend­ed un­til 6 pm to­day.

The Met Of­fice had warned of iso­lat­ed thun­der­storms and gusty winds as well as street and flash flood­ing.

The rain, which be­gan at 2 am yes­ter­day, fell con­sis­tent­ly in some ar­eas for 12 hours and var­ied in in­ten­si­ty.

Yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­struct­ed all her MPs to hit the ground to as­sist con­stituents and in­struct­ed Ameen, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John and Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram to lead the ef­forts.

Min­is­ter John told Guardian Me­dia the Prime Min­is­ter was con­stant­ly kept in the loop by her min­is­ters and she was pre­pared to come out to get a first-hand look at the sit­u­a­tion, but was as­sured the sit­u­a­tion was un­der con­trol.

In an up­date at 4 pm yes­ter­day, Ameen’s min­istry con­firmed lo­calised flood­ing had been re­port­ed by the Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion; the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion; the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; and the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Ameen, whose min­istry is­sued sev­er­al up­dates through­out the day, as­sured that re­sponse ef­forts had been un­der­tak­en even as rain­fall con­tin­ued across the coun­try.

In San­gre Grande, land­slips were cleared, in the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co area crews were seen clear­ing wa­ter­ways, which were clogged, while the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of­fered sand­bags to res­i­dents as the per­sis­tent down­pour con­tin­ued.

In one of her sev­er­al up­dates to the me­dia and na­tion, Ameen said that in ad­di­tion to the proac­tive mea­sures to pro­tect af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties and sup­port re­cov­ery ef­forts, of­fi­cials had al­so been re­spond­ing to in­ci­dents on the ground, in­clud­ing at­tend­ing to land­slides, fall­en trees, and flash flood­ing.

The Min­is­ter al­so ad­vised cit­i­zens to im­me­di­ate­ly re­port blocked drains and clogged wa­ter­cours­es so equip­ment could be sent out to help pre­vent wide­spread flood­ing, and re­duce the ad­verse im­pact on homes, busi­ness­es and schools.

To­ba­go was large­ly un­af­fect­ed with res­i­dents there re­port­ing over­cast skies and lit­tle to no rain in most ar­eas.

Farm­ers hard hit

The heavy rains left hun­dreds of farm­ers cut off from their gar­dens af­ter a bridge col­lapsed in Aranguez South; while oth­ers raced to sal­vage what pro­duce they could be­fore their crop beds were cov­ered by ris­ing flood­wa­ters over in Aranguez North.

Farmer Sudesh Dulchan com­plained of be­ing un­able to cul­ti­vate his two acres of agri­cul­tur­al land at Farm Road, Aranguez South, as he claimed years of aban­don­ment and ne­glect had left him bat­tling floods every time it rained.

Wad­ing through an­kle-high wa­ter as Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Ma­rine Re­sources Ravi Rati­ram looked on, Dulchan said the ir­ri­ga­tion meth­ods em­ployed were use­less.

“Is three pumps it have down here and they aban­don them,” he said, adding, “Jack Warn­er had send one for we but they take it up and they move it out.”

“Af­ter that, I can’t plant again be­cause my land al­ways flood­ing. It doh make sense to plant and then I flood­ing. I will go by the Agri­cul­ture Of­fice and they will give me next to noth­ing.” Dulchan usu­al­ly plants toma­toes, ochro and baigan for more than ten years.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter and MP for Aranguez/St Joseph, De­vesh Ma­haraj, vis­it­ed Aranguez North to see for him­self what was tak­ing place, as he lis­tened to the com­plaints by some of the af­fect­ed farm­ers.

Over at Sama­roo Trace East, Aranguez North, Mal­com Joseph, his wife Sharon Sad­hoo and son Randy Joseph, along with work­ers, fever­ish­ly tried to pick as much let­tuce as they could be­fore the near­by riv­er bank burst and flood­ed their gar­den.

Sad­hoo said they had promised a buy­er the let­tuce, so the small gar­den where this was be­ing cul­ti­vat­ed was their pri­or­i­ty yes­ter­day.

Sad­hoo kept a watch­ful eye on the three wa­ter pumps at work.

Gaz­ing over at his gar­den on the op­po­site side of the road, where he had plant­ed toma­to, baigan and pi­men­to, Mal­colm Joseph said he had no idea just what his loss­es would look like un­til the flood­wa­ters re­ced­ed.

But he ac­knowl­edged sad­ly, it cer­tain­ly may not re­flect his ini­tial in­vest­ment of $140,000.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram said, “It is very sad and un­for­tu­nate what these farm­ers have to go through, hav­ing spent all their time, ef­forts and re­sources in cul­ti­vat­ing food for our na­tion and to now ex­pe­ri­ence these kinds of loss­es.”

In­di­cat­ing there were block­ages on the north­ern side of the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, he as­sured the var­i­ous min­istries were com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing the com­pro­mised in­fra­struc­ture on the south­ern side of the high­way, as well.

Rati­ram said flood­ing had al­so been re­port­ed by farm­ers in Waller­field and Jern­ing­ham.

He promised to bring quick and im­me­di­ate re­lief to those af­fect­ed.

He at­trib­uted yes­ter­day’s floods to the ne­glect of agri­cul­tur­al wa­ter cours­es by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“If it is that they are not cleaned, it bot­tle­necks, and while the riv­er may pull the wa­ter, if we don’t clean the oth­er trib­u­taries and canals lead­ing to the main wa­ter­cours­es, this is what we will ex­pe­ri­ence,” he said.

The min­is­ter added, “This is what we have been speak­ing out about, against this piece-meal, piece-meal clean­ing. It is not some­thing that is go­ing to work. It has to be a holis­tic plan with a com­pre­hen­sive drainage plan for the coun­try.”

He said the small of­fer­ings of flood com­pen­sa­tion to af­fect­ed farm­ers in the past was al­so some­thing the new Gov­ern­ment was aim­ing to rec­ti­fy.

“This is some­thing we will def­i­nite­ly be look­ing at. We will see how best this en­tire thing can be re­viewed, what kind of com­pas­sion­ate fa­cil­i­ty can be pro­vid­ed, so that we can pro­vide some lev­el of hope for our farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty.”