Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has warned that the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice’s ex­ten­sion of the Or­ange Lev­el River­ine Flood Alert un­til 6 pm to­day means sev­er­al hours of tor­ren­tial rains, high winds and more flood­ing can be ex­pect­ed.

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen said sev­er­al ar­eas of the coun­try were neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by the in­clement weath­er.

“The river­ine lev­els are al­ready quite high. The soil is very sat­u­rat­ed across the coun­try and so we are very con­cerned with the in­creased po­ten­tial for flood dam­age of homes, col­lapsed road­ways that have been weak­ened over time by small land­slips, dam­age to crops and live­stock and the well-be­ing of our so­ci­ety as a whole. Farm­ers across the coun­try have been af­fect­ed by over­land flood­ing and loss of crops,” Ameen said.

She said there were ma­jor re­ports of flood­ing from Rio Claro, Kel­ly Vil­lage in Ca­roni, San­gre Grande, St He­le­na, Manuel Con­go Vil­lage, Brazil Vil­lage, Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co, Las Lo­mas and Pi­paro. There were al­so re­ports from Ch­agua­nas, Ari­ma, Tabaquite and Las Lo­mas.

Go­ing fur­ther in­to the sta­tis­tics, the min­is­ter said there were:

• 18 re­ports of fall­en trees in Diego Mar­tin and San­gre Grande

• Three ma­jor land­slides along the North Coast Road

• Two col­lapsed road­ways in Poole Vil­lage, Rio Claro; and Heights of Aripo in Ari­ma

• Eight dam­aged roofs in Port-of-Spain, Princes Town, Siparia and Rio Claro

Ameen ac­cused the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion of ne­glect but claimed the present Gov­ern­ment had act­ed quick­ly to avoid worse dam­age.

She said the Gov­ern­ment start­ed its Flood Mit­i­ga­tion Pro­gramme on May 13, with its drain clear­ing and em­bank­ment works tak­ing place from May 14-19.

“We have pos­i­tive out­comes be­cause of our ear­ly plan­ning and our proac­tive ap­proach. We are see­ing faster drainage in wa­ter-logged ar­eas. We saw ar­eas where it came off, but the runoff was much faster than be­fore …We have seen few­er homes un­der wa­ter. We have re­duced struc­tur­al dam­age be­cause of that, and thank­ful­ly, so far, min­i­mal dis­rup­tion in terms of na­tion­al ex­ams,” Ameen said.

She urged the pub­lic to stay in­doors where pos­si­ble and to avoid dri­ving on flood­ed road­ways.

Min­is­ter in the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry Sad­dam Ho­sein said the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion for farm­ers is al­so be­ing con­sid­ered and dis­cussed.

Mean­while, in a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said it was forced to close 16 EC­CE cen­tres, 38 pri­ma­ry schools and 13 sec­ondary schools to­day due to “pre­vail­ing harsh weath­er con­di­tions.”

The min­istry said the de­ci­sion came af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice and the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, adding that it was “pri­ori­tis­ing the safe­ty and well-be­ing of stu­dents, staff and school com­mu­ni­ties.”

De­spite the dis­rup­tions, 3,736 stu­dents sat the CAPE Caribbean Stud­ies ex­am across 82 schools. The min­istry re­lo­cat­ed some can­di­dates to cen­tres clos­er to their homes and al­lowed oth­ers to write the ex­am even though they ar­rived late.

“All af­fect­ed stu­dents were ac­com­mo­dat­ed,” the min­istry said.

Flood­ing and road clo­sures al­so dis­rupt­ed the School Nu­tri­tion Pro­gramme. The Na­tion­al Schools Di­etary Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (NS­D­SL) redi­rect­ed meals to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions in Pe­nal/Debe, Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co and Cou­va/Tabaquite while full de­liv­ery ser­vices re­main sus­pend­ed.

NS­D­SL said it was “com­mit­ted to restor­ing full meal de­liv­ery ser­vices to af­fect­ed schools as soon as safe­ty per­mits” and is mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion close­ly.