Re­lo­ca­tion is not an op­tion for res­i­dents of Green­vale Park in La Hor­quet­ta, who were among the worst af­fect­ed by last week­end's flood­ing across north­east Trinidad.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Stu­art Young made the state­ment while an­swer­ing ques­tions at a press con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day.

Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing such a mea­sure, which was pro­posed by res­i­dents who fear the in­ci­dent may re­oc­cur in the fu­ture, Young said it was not pos­si­ble giv­en the con­straints faced by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

"The talk of re­lo­ca­tion is not one that can be en­ter­tained at this stage. The HDC does not have suf­fi­cient hous­ing. There are 174,000 ap­pli­ca­tions for a very, very lim­it­ed num­ber of avail­able units," Young said.

As he ac­knowl­edged that some res­i­dents were still trau­ma­tised by the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing ma­rooned be­tween last Fri­day and Sun­day, Young said the Gov­ern­ment would be work­ing on find­ing so­lu­tions to the flood man­age­ment prob­lem threat­en­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

"The Gov­ern­ment is not go­ing to bury its head in the sand. They (en­gi­neer­ing ex­perts) have to look at this and come to us with po­ten­tial so­lu­tions," Young said.

How­ev­er, he claimed that from his tours of the com­mu­ni­ty the cause of the flood­ing was eas­i­ly de­ter­mined. He said the is­sues in­clude the fact that the com­mu­ni­ty was built next to a me­an­der­ing riv­er which was in­ter­sect­ed by a drainage sys­tem for the La Hor­quet­ta com­mu­ni­ty.

"I have al­ways told peo­ple I can't change the past," Young said, as he point­ed out the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to find­ing a long-term so­lu­tion.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's press con­fer­ence, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith al­so re­vealed that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had in­sti­tut­ed 24-hour pa­trols in the com­mu­ni­ty as there were re­ports of loot­ing af­ter res­i­dents were evac­u­at­ed from their homes and re­lo­cat­ed to shel­ters.