Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen has warned Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives that they have a ma­jor role to play as the coun­try grap­ples with the ef­fects of cli­mate change.

Ameen made the can­did state­ment as she de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress at a na­tion­al work­shop on “Cli­mate Re­silient Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment in T&T”, host­ed by the Com­mon­wealth Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Fo­rum (CLGF) at the Hilton last Tues­day.

“Even though it is not the di­rect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment (cli­mate change), it is our busi­ness be­cause our farm­ers are our con­stituents and our burgess­es.”

Ameen said Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are af­fect­ed when their farm­ers in the dry sea­son can­not find wa­ter for their crops and an­i­mals, and when their crops are drowned in flood­wa­ters dur­ing the wet sea­son.

She fur­ther added, “It is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of every Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive to make what I call re­al ac­tion to move be­yond our plans, our dis­cus­sions and to make sure that we have tan­gi­ble re­sults for the peo­ple we serve.

“The judge of these things will not be the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Au­thor­i­ties (CAL­GA), not in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, the judge of your suc­cess is the peo­ple who are out there and re­gard­less of whichev­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty you rep­re­sent peo­ple ex­pect per­for­mance.”

Af­ter her speech, Ameen field­ed ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on whether those who work at the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment lev­el are equipped with both the knowl­edge and tools to stave off the ef­fects of cli­mate change.

She said this was not on­ly lim­it­ed to the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives at Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment but al­so the tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers and en­gi­neers who work with­in the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and bor­oughs.

“I feel like Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has been cheat­ed in the past where sev­er­al Cor­po­ra­tions did not have these pro­fes­sion­al of­fi­cers at­tached, al­though it is re­quired by law, they did not have the fund­ing re­quired to do cer­tain projects and to do a lot of train­ing that is al­so very im­por­tant. It is my view that we have to strength­en Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to meet the chang­ing the de­mands,” Ameen stat­ed.

She said in ad­di­tion to the fi­nan­cial re­sources, it is al­so key to give cor­po­ra­tions across the coun­try the equip­ment and train­ing need­ed to en­sure they can mit­i­gate the ef­fects of flood­ing and droughts.

Ameen urged the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors in the room to “think be­yond box drains”.

She ref­er­enced the flood­ing Port-of-Spain has seen, telling the Deputy May­or Abena Hart­ley who was al­so in at­ten­dance, her cor­po­ra­tion must work hand in hand with the Gov­ern­ment to con­front the is­sues fac­ing the cap­i­tal city.

Among those at­tend­ing the work­shop were Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj; Chair­man of the Ma­yaro-Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ray­mond Co­zi­er; coun­cil­lor for Fe­lic­i­ty/En­deav­our Sun­dar Jookoo, and coun­cil­lor for Long­denville/Tal­paro and Chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ryan Ram­per­sad.

Sev­er­al were asked by Guardian Me­dia whether the coun­try should es­tab­lish a Min­istry of Cli­mate Change, but while they ex­pand­ed on the ur­gency of the cri­sis, they said it was not nec­es­sary at this time. In­stead, Ram­per­sad called for more re­ten­tion dams across the coun­try, ad­mit­ting that the ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture may not be able to deal with the large amount of rain­fall even when drains are cleaned and rivers dredged.

He said, “That con­cept of re­ten­tion ponds across the coun­try could be the so­lu­tion. If you have those prob­lems where your wa­ter­ways are clean, you have a high tide and you are go­ing to get flood­ing, then we need to find a way to con­tain wa­ter tem­porar­i­ly be­cause every six hours you have a high tide and a low tide and in the low tide you can re­lease that wa­ter.”

At the open­ing of the work­shop, Ameen al­so an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue map­ping where every blind per­son is in T&T to be able to as­sist them in the event of a dis­as­ter.

The project was start­ed last De­cem­ber, and Ameen reaf­firmed her min­istry’s com­mit­ment to not on­ly map the lo­ca­tions of those who are blind but al­so those who are dis­abled.

Mem­ber of the Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Ken­neth Sur­ratt who al­so at­tend­ed the work­shop, told Guardian Me­dia that to­geth­er with the min­istry, they are at­tempt­ing to map every per­son who is blind in T&T while mea­sur­ing their need—whether it is high, medi­um or low.

He said this was be­cause there are some peo­ple who are blind but are mo­bile and know how to nav­i­gate their sur­round­ings, while there are oth­ers who need ad­di­tion­al help. He said they are al­so look­ing at the dif­fer­ent cen­tres across the coun­try should they need to re­lo­cate peo­ple who are blind.

“We want to en­sure the cen­tres are ac­ces­si­ble for per­sons who are blind. Some­times peo­ple think about ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty for the blind as wheel­chair ramps, per­sons who are blind don’t need that, we need prop­er colour con­trast.”

They are hop­ing to com­plete the ex­er­cise in the next three months.

The work­shop is part of the wider Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Cli­mate Change Cen­tre “Mul­ti-Coun­try Cli­mate Re­silient Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Ini­tia­tive” and seeks to bring to­geth­er par­tic­i­pants across lo­cal and cen­tral gov­ern­ment with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for key in­fra­struc­ture, ser­vices, and gov­er­nance.

The work­shop will look at the gov­er­nance and man­age­ment of set­tle­ments and ser­vices with a view to ad­dress­ing cross-func­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, com­mu­ni­ty out­reach, ca­pac­i­ty de­vel­op­ment, in­fra­struc­ture main­te­nance, fi­nanc­ing, and na­ture-based so­lu­tions. It will al­so ex­am­ine the dif­fer­ences be­tween on­go­ing stress­es on the sys­tem and acute emer­gen­cies and dis­as­ter risk re­sponse. It is a three-day work­shop that end­ed on Thurs­day.