Trucks and trac­tors con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in the dead of the night back­fill­ing re­serve land near the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies cam­pus in Debe, even as two gov­ern­ment agen­cies launched sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Res­i­dent Videsh Laldeo, who lives next to the back­filled area, said a team came to the area at 3 am on Fri­day and con­tin­ued back­fill­ing.

“I can­not un­der­stand how lands which were de­signed as a re­serve can now be back­filled by a busi­ness­man. Who gave this per­mis­sion?” Laldeo asked, adding that the block­ing of the wa­ter­course was caus­ing him sleep­less nights.

Hav­ing suf­fered ex­ten­sive flood­ing mul­ti­ple times last year, Laldeo said he is pray­ing that the rain doesn’t fall.

Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein said the Chief En­gi­neer from his min­istry is ex­pect­ed to vis­it the site and con­duct an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the block­ing of the wa­ter­course.

Ho­sein said too much ad-hoc de­vel­op­ment was tak­ing place across the coun­try and blamed the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties for wide­spread flood­ing which oc­curred last year.

How­ev­er, land de­vel­op­er Deo Go­sine de­nied that he had blocked the wa­ter­course. He claimed it was the Min­istry of Works un­der a past gov­ern­ment which blocked the riv­er when it built a wa­ter re­ten­tion pond.

Go­sine said: “I have let­ters from the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Works apol­o­gis­ing for block­ing the riv­er. We are fill­ing our area which we are al­lowed to. The main wa­ter­course is blocked be­cause they put a bank there but we are go­ing to open it up.

“I have a back­hoe there on site and we will open the wa­ter­course.”

He de­nied that re­cent back­fill­ing had af­fect­ed the wa­ter flow near the UWI cam­pus.

“The UWI wa­ter goes straight in­to the riv­er,” he said.

Asked whether he had ap­provals to back­fill on re­serve land, Go­sine said: “I have all the ap­provals and what­ev­er else that is re­quired for the prop­er­ty has al­ready been done.”

He agreed to pro­vide copies of the ap­provals.

Go­sine al­so de­nied that he was try­ing to force Laldeo out of the lands which he has been oc­cu­py­ing for the past 37 years.

“I know the gen­tle­man well and I know his fa­ther. I am a re­spon­si­ble per­son and I will not try to take ad­van­tage of a poor man. We gave him a ma­chine for an en­tire day to do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary,” he said.

Go­sine said he is ready to work with the tech­ni­cal en­gi­neers from the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion and the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

“We can open the drain to­day. The Min­istry did a good job in clean­ing the riv­er and we will break the bank so that there will be no flood­ing at the end of this,” he said.

MP for Oropouche East Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said he was aware that land de­vel­op­ers were ex­ca­vat­ing lands and back­fill­ing por­tions of the Oropouche Drainage Basin.

“I am aware of this. We have writ­ten let­ters to the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment of­fices. We com­plain on a reg­u­lar ba­sis and ask for help,” Mooni­lal said.