Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

In the af­ter­math of last week’s se­vere flood­ing that dev­as­tat­ed com­mu­ni­ties across sev­er­al parts of Trinidad, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ca­roni East, Dr Rishad Seecha­ran, says re­lief op­er­a­tions have in­ten­si­fied to sup­port the af­fect­ed res­i­dents.

The heavy rain­fall be­tween last week Wednes­day and Fri­day trig­gered sev­er­al weath­er alert warn­ings and left roads and home sub­merged, with many fam­i­lies grap­pling with sig­nif­i­cant loss­es. 

Seecher­an yes­ter­day said he has been ac­tive­ly co-or­di­nat­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of ham­pers and es­sen­tial re­lief items to those in need. Recog­nis­ing the ur­gent need for as­sis­tance, he has mo­bilised re­sources to pro­vide im­me­di­ate sup­port to flood vic­tims. 

“Even af­ter the rains and the wa­ters re­ced­ed, the wa­ter some­how re­mained for two days. We will be dis­trib­ut­ing sup­plies to those in ar­eas from Madras Trace go­ing right down to St He­le­na and El Car­men. Mem­bers from my of­fice are on the ground as­sess­ing those who got wa­ter in their homes and they are the ones we are try­ing to tar­get. ” 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Seecha­ran con­firmed that he has since been re­ceiv­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for flood re­lief grants.

“We have many, many flood re­lief grants. The dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit has been con­tact­ed both in the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion as well as in the Tu­na­puna / Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, so we have a num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions. Teams are on the ground get­ting the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion.”

The Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, Khadi­jah Ameen, added that dam­age as­sess­ments were un­der­way across all re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

“In­side their homes would have been dam­age to fur­ni­ture, ap­pli­ances, and so on. There were a cou­ple of peo­ple who had dam­age to the house it­self, the struc­ture it­self, and we have asked each cor­po­ra­tion’s en­gi­neers to do an as­sess­ment of what is hap­pen­ing.”

She al­so not­ed that while flood wa­ters set­tled, an­oth­er threat loomed.

“We have al­so ob­served sev­er­al in­stances of  land­slips that are threat­en­ing homes, so it may not be record­ed as a dam­aged home in this in­stance but based on what’s hap­pen­ing, I could see very soon that those house­holds will be im­pact­ed.”

Mean­while, Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Min­is­ter, Ravi Rati­ram, said steps tak­en to clear wa­ter­cours­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly near farm­lands such as in Aranguez mit­i­gat­ed flood­ing im­pacts.

He said af­fect­ed farm­ers, how­ev­er, will be pro­vid­ed with re­lief.

“Our of­fi­cers are out there do­ing the da­ta col­lec­tion, and we are work­ing close­ly with these farm­ers to see how we can pro­vide the sup­port go­ing for­ward.”

While Rati­ram paint­ed a sober­ing pic­ture of the scale of dev­as­ta­tion, he slammed the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cus­ing it of fail­ing to take the nec­es­sary steps to help vul­ner­a­ble low-ly­ing com­mu­ni­ties.