Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed is call­ing on res­i­dents liv­ing in flood-prone ar­eas to adopt a proac­tive stance in safe­guard­ing their prop­er­ties dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

Speak­ing to the me­dia on Wednes­day, Mo­hammed stat­ed that sand­banks have been es­tab­lished at eight strate­gic lo­ca­tions across the bor­ough, al­low­ing burgess­es to fill their own sand­bags in prepa­ra­tion for ad­verse weath­er.

“We are ask­ing peo­ple that live in flood-prone ar­eas if you need sand­bags get them be­fore the bad weath­er. Don’t get it dur­ing the bad weath­er. It is avail­able right now and you can get that,” he said.

The may­or em­pha­sised that the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion is ac­tive­ly en­gaged in the de­silt­ing and clear­ing of drains and ma­jor wa­ter­cours­es. He dis­closed that $129,000 from the cor­po­ra­tion’s ex­ist­ing bud­get has been al­lo­cat­ed to source equip­ment for the clean­ing of these wa­ter chan­nels.

Mo­hammed al­so said ad­di­tion­al funds would be ear­marked in the up­com­ing fi­nan­cial year specif­i­cal­ly for drainage im­prove­ment works.

May­or Mo­hammed made these re­marks dur­ing the launch of a bor­ough-wide tree-plant­i­ng ini­tia­tive at the Pierre Road Recre­ation Ground, where he was joined by Ch­agua­nas West MP Dr Neil Go­sine. The event marked the com­mence­ment of a project to plant 1,000 poui trees across the con­stituen­cy.

Go­sine re­vealed that the ini­tia­tive is part of a broad­er plan to en­hance the aes­thet­ic ap­peal of Ch­agua­nas West, not­ing that both yel­low and pink va­ri­eties of the flow­er­ing tree would be plant­ed.

“The tree plant­i­ng ex­er­cise was to as­sist in the beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy,” he said. The plant­i­ng is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed over a month.

Go­sine al­so said that forth­com­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al work would be un­der­tak­en along the banks of the Ca­roni Riv­er to help mit­i­gate the risk of flood­ing.