Jesse Ramdeo

Res­i­dents of Car­li Bay Road in Cou­va are con­cerned that the fail­ure of au­thor­i­ties to clear drains and wa­ter­cours­es in the area can re­sult in an­oth­er flood­ing which they say will dec­i­mate crops, live­stock and the area’s road in­fra­struc­ture.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, Kei­th De­owan, 64, said hopes for a Christ­mas mir­a­cle fad­ed af­ter calls for ur­gent as­sis­tance seemed to have fall­en on deaf ears.

De­owan said the road­way that ser­vices scores of res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty, as well as the area’s fish­er­folk, is now erod­ing due to the flood­ing which swept through the area in No­vem­ber.

“Since the flood­ing, we have been wait­ing for help from with­in the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion to come and get this place on the go but since then no one has come. No­body come to even help clean the place at all, look at all the rub­ble and silt that come down, the riv­er bank had burst and all of us in the back here suf­fered ma­jor loss­es,” he said.

De­owan, a farmer and me­chan­ic, ex­plained that those in the area ap­pear to be for­got­ten and are now gripped by fear over the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a heavy show­er could have dev­as­tat­ing im­pacts.

He added, “No­body com­ing to help clean this drain at all the drains which are at least 3 feet deep are filled with slush and mud and no­body clean­ing the slight­est rain we get right now, every­thing will be back to square one.”

De­owan claimed that when coun­cil­lors for the area are con­front­ed, they be­gin shift­ing blame rather than at­tempt­ing to as­sist.

“Yes, we spoke to the coun­cil­lors for the area. One man is tak­ing out him­self the next man say­ing he is not in charge. The next one tak­ing out him­self as well. I don’t want to blame any­body. Last I heard was that they don’t have the funds the funds for any­thing so we just left like this and it is very un­bear­able.”

The area bor­ders the con­stituen­cy of Cou­va South and ac­cord­ing to Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rudranath In­dars­ingh, the is­sue is one that he is fa­mil­iar with.

He is chal­leng­ing the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to un­der­take the nec­es­sary works dur­ing the dry sea­son, he al­so ques­tioned whether or not the area will ben­e­fit from projects be­ing fund­ed by re­cent gov­ern­ment al­lo­ca­tions.

“The gov­ern­ment has stat­ed in re­cent times they have al­lo­cat­ed $100 mil­lion to deal with in­fra­struc­tur­al re­pairs, roads, drainage is­sues, land­slips and so on we al­so heard about the mon­eti­sa­tion of the sec­ondary roads im­prove­ment com­pa­ny, that spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny to the tune of $200 mil­lion to deal with these is­sues. In­di­cat­ing these things are fine (but) if there are no re­leas­es and no ac­tu­al work done then the sit­u­a­tion will re­main the same,” In­dars­ingh said.

In­dars­ingh said while the con­cerns of the cit­i­zens in the area were jus­ti­fied and rep­re­sen­ta­tion has been made for as­sis­tance, the gov­ern­ment ul­ti­mate­ly has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to act.

Guardian Me­dia could not reach Min­istry of­fi­cials for com­ment yes­ter­day.