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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Concern about dredger abandoned

in Penal river

by

694 days ago
20230422
Edward Moodie, president of the South Oropouche Riverine Flood Action Group, stands next to amphibious dredger that has been lefy idle in a river in the South Oropouche Drainage Basin.

Edward Moodie, president of the South Oropouche Riverine Flood Action Group, stands next to amphibious dredger that has been lefy idle in a river in the South Oropouche Drainage Basin.

RISHI RAGOONATH

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

 

Farm­ers from the South Oropouche Drainage basin are de­mand­ing to know why an am­phibi­ous dredger has been aban­doned in the mid­dle of a riv­er since last No­vem­ber. The rust­ed dredger sits in the riv­er at Pe­nal with weeds grow­ing around it. It was brought in to clean parts of the riv­er which drains the South Oropouche Drainage Basin.

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion (SOR­FA) group Ed­ward Mood­ie said ma­jor rivers in Oropouche are still cov­ered with wa­ter hy­acinths and the banks are in dire need of re­pairs.

“We are ask­ing the Min­is­ter to ex­plain why they are al­low­ing an ex­pen­sive piece of ma­chin­ery which was paid for with tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars to rot in this mud­dy riv­er, hid­den away from the pub­lic,” he said. 

Mood­ie said SOR­FA will be fil­ing le­gal ac­tion on be­half of res­i­dents of Wood­land and en­vi­rons.

“We are li­ais­ing with at­tor­neys be­cause our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to the en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty have been breached. The State has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure wa­ter­ways are main­tained. We have iden­ti­fied every sin­gle breach and area that need­ed clear­ing and riv­er banks to be built and ab­solute­ly noth­ing was done,” he said.

Farmer Jagdish Soogrim said al­though new gates were in­stalled in Tul­sa Trace, salt­wa­ter in­tru­sion is con­tin­u­ing. He said low wa­ter lev­els are af­fect­ing farm­ers.

“We de­pend on this riv­er to wa­ter our crops and dairy farm­ers use this riv­er as well. Some­one needs to look in­to this be­cause it seems the new­ly in­stalled gates are caus­ing salt wa­ter to seep in­to the riv­er,” he said.

Con­tact­ed about the mat­ter yes­ter­day, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said he was in Par­lia­ment and would com­ment at a lat­er time.

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