Shas­tri Boodan

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed is urg­ing res­i­dents in flood-prone ar­eas to take proac­tive steps to pro­tect their prop­er­ties as the rainy sea­son be­gins.

Speak­ing to re­porters on Wednes­day, May­or Mo­hammed said sand­banks have been set up at eight strate­gic lo­ca­tions across the bor­ough to al­low burgess­es to fill their own sand­bags ahead of se­vere weath­er.

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

He said the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion has be­gun de­silt­ing and clear­ing out­fall drains and junc­tions along ma­jor wa­ter­cours­es. He added that $129,000 from the Cor­po­ra­tion’s cur­rent bud­get has been al­lo­cat­ed to hire equip­ment for this work, and ad­di­tion­al funds will be set aside in the up­com­ing fi­nan­cial year for drainage im­prove­ments.

May­or Mo­hammed made these re­marks at 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 ini­tia­tive aims to plant 1,000 poui trees across the con­stituen­cy.

Dr Go­sine said the project is part of a broad­er plan to en­hance the aes­thet­ic ap­peal of Ch­agua­nas West and con­firmed that both yel­low and pink poui trees would be plant­ed. “The tree plant­i­ng ex­er­cise was to as­sist in the beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Ch­agua­nas West Con­stituen­cy,” he said.

He al­so said in­fra­struc­tur­al work along the banks of the Ca­roni Riv­er is ex­pect­ed soon to help re­duce the risk of fu­ture flood­ing.