AN­NA LISA PAUL &

CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Flood­ing along the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road caused hav­oc yes­ter­day, dam­ag­ing prop­er­ties, felling an elec­tric­i­ty pole and dam­ag­ing part of the road­way, mak­ing it im­pass­able to ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic.

The road was de­clared closed by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port last evening, as wa­ter con­tin­ued to rise, caus­ing more dam­age to the road­way and mak­ing it dan­ger­ous for mo­torists want­i­ng to tra­verse the route.

Res­i­dents who live along the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road said their homes were in­un­dat­ed by as much as 4 feet of wa­ter.

Some of them said this was the worst flood­ing they had ever ex­pe­ri­enced but at­trib­uted it to the di­ver­sion and nar­row­ing of a riv­er a riv­er by a de­vel­op­er.

One guest house own­er, who did not want to be named, said this was the third ma­jor flood in three years and called on Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to ad­dress the prob­lem.

“It is loss­es and more loss­es for the last three years with­out any com­pen­sa­tion,” he said.

A med­ical doc­tor, who be­gan con­struc­tion of his beach house about two weeks ago, cried when he saw his struc­ture dam­aged by the flood­wa­ters, say­ing he had al­ready about $300,000 on the struc­ture.

Res­i­dents and com­muters trav­el­ling out of Ma­yaro to get to San­gre Grande by taxis and maxi taxi said they are al­so now be­ing asked to pay as much as $45.

Taxi dri­ver Son­ny Ma­habir said the in­crease in fare was due to the fact that they are now forced to tra­verse through Rio Claro in­to Biche and Plum Mi­tan on the South­ern Main Road to get to San­gre Grande, which a much longer route, be­cause of the flood­ing is­sues.

The dri­vers said the road con­di­tion is al­so de­plorable and they are us­ing more gas and diesel for their ve­hi­cles.

Ma­yaro res­i­dent Ra­jwantie Har­rikissoon said it is now cost­ing res­i­dents $90 per day to get to work. De­spite the ex­tra cost, she praised the dri­vers for pro­vid­ing the ser­vice to the pub­lic.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray called on Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan to launch an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to land de­vel­op­ments along the Man­zanil­la Road.

Paray said the road col­lapsed af­ter heavy rains and flood­ing, re­sult­ing in se­ri­ous in­con­ve­nience to res­i­dents and peo­ple who need to use it.

He laid most of the blame square­ly on il­le­gal de­vel­op­ers whose ac­tiv­i­ty is re­sult­ing in the Nar­i­va Swamp to over­flow its bound­aries.

“Due to in­con­sid­er­ate and per­haps il­le­gal de­vel­op­ing of lands in the se­quen­tial di­vert­ing of wa­ter cours­es, again, thou­sands of man hours and school hours are now be­ing lost. I am call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port to act ur­gent­ly and swift­ly to launch an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this il­le­gal de­vel­op­ment which is, as I have been told, is the pri­ma­ry cause of the flood­ing and de­struc­tion of the Man­zanil­la road­way,” Paray said.

He said the Man­zanil­la road­way is un­der the con­trol of the Works and Trans­port Min­istry’s High­ways Di­vi­sion.

The MP lament­ed the fact that in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the state of the road­way is not read­i­ly forth­com­ing from the min­istry.

“It has be­come so bad that HR (Hu­man Re­source) de­part­ments are ask­ing strand­ed em­ploy­ees in Ma­yaro to present proof of this blocked artery to Port- of-Spain. HR de­part­ments are ac­cept­ing my Face­book posts as proof,” he said

Paray al­so called on the min­istry to “put on their big boy pants” and pro­vide dai­ly up­dates to the pub­lic about the state of the road and planned re­me­di­al works.

“I make a fur­ther call to the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port to fa­cil­i­tate the move­ment of chil­dren... school chil­dren and oth­er emer­gency work­ers from Ma­yaro to San­gre Grande via PTSC (Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion) bus­es,” he added.

Al­so at the news con­fer­ence, yes­ter­day was Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes who slammed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s state­ment that ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al works will com­mence around the coun­try in the next dry sea­son.

“These are the lives of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go and you want to tell them dry sea­son? Now, we can ac­cept that cer­tain types of work can on­ly be done at a cer­tain point in time but there have been dry sea­sons for the past sev­en years, what is so spe­cial about the 2023 dry sea­son that we have to wait un­til then?”

SGRC boss urges cau­tion

Last evening, San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Anil Juter­am urged mo­torists and pedes­tri­ans to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion along the road­way, say­ing it posed a dan­ger to all road users.

Ear­li­er, dur­ing a tour of the af­fect­ed area, which stretched from the Man­zanil­la Beach Re­sort and con­tin­ued past Ti­ki Bar, Juter­am heard com­plaints from af­fect­ed farm­ers and res­i­dents.

Stand­ing in the pour­ing rain around 11.32 am, one farmer claimed, “The main over­flow is blocked up by peo­ple build­ing re­sorts and what not.”

Un­will­ing to call names, he con­tin­ued, “The Plum Mi­tan wa­ter comes down here and the two main out­lets blocked be­cause the Man­a­tee Trust don’t want the riv­er dredge to go back in­to the Plum Mi­tan Riv­er for the big amount of over­flow to go out. They say it is a re­serve and they can’t dredge the riv­er and that is the main cause for the wa­ter com­ing up and cross­ing the road here.”

Point­ing to the area lo­cat­ed at the back of the Pamzanil­la Es­tate, the farmer told Juter­am there used to be an over­flow there which al­lowed ex­cess wa­ter to flow out so there would be no flood­ing.

But the farmer added, “That is blocked al­so.”

Stand­ing atop the con­crete bridge rail­ing as he point­ed to the riv­er that runs next to the Man­zanil­la Beach Re­sort and was not filled to ca­pac­i­ty de­spite the flood­ed road­way a short dis­tance away, Juter­am said, “Some un­scrupu­lous land de­vel­op­er is in­ter­fer­ing with the nat­ur­al wa­ter­course and block­ing the flow of the wa­ter.”

He chal­lenged Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the claims, not­ing busi­nes­sown­ers, farm­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic from Navet, Biche, Plum Mi­tan, Man­zanil­la and Ma­yaro were be­ing af­fect­ed.

Juter­am added, “I don’t know what the Min­istry of Works and the Min­is­ter of Works are wait­ing on...or if the en­tire road­way has to be­come like this in or­der to get some at­ten­tion.”

An af­fect­ed res­i­dent said, “We won’t even need pumps if these rivers are cleared prop­er­ly, but it is blocked and that is what is caus­ing the prob­lem.”

At the pop­u­lar Ti­ki Bar, work­ers were seen fill­ing sand­bags and plac­ing them at the en­trance to pre­vent wa­ter from flood­ing the fa­cil­i­ty.

Juter­am urged the min­istry to bring in ex­ca­va­tors and back­hoes to clean and de-silt the wa­ter­cours­es in the area from the tourist re­sort and be­yond, as he said this kind of flood­ing was last seen around 2013/2014. — With re­port­ing by Ralph Ban­warie