The Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da said Tues­day that mil­lions of dol­lars would be re­quired to re­pair and/or re­place pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture dam­aged or de­mol­ished by the flood­ing caused by the ex­ces­sive rain­fall the coun­try has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing since No­vem­ber 8.

“This will run the Gov­ern­ment and tax­pay­ers of Grena­da in­to mil­lions of dol­lars,” Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell told a news con­fer­ence, where he up­dat­ed the na­tion of the on­go­ing ef­fects of the ex­ces­sive rain­fall which cause flood­ing, land­slides and rivers to burst their banks.

Mitchell said that his ad­min­is­tra­tion is clear­ly aware of the sig­nif­i­cant cost, dam­age and in­con­ve­nience that this has caused and will con­tin­ue to cause.

“In ad­di­tion to the on­go­ing clean-up ef­forts be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Min­istry of In­fra­struc­ture and the var­i­ous con­trac­tors and clean­ing crews and road of­fi­cers as well as the Min­istry of Mo­bil­i­sa­tion, Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Trans­for­ma­tion we are al­so go­ing to have to pro­vide things like hous­ing as­sis­tance, cloth­ing, food to fam­i­lies who have been im­pact­ed by the flood­ing,” he said.

The Met of­fice has record­ed 235 mil­li­l­itres of rain at the Point Salines area while da­ta from the rain gauges around the coun­try is yet to be tab­u­lat­ed. How­ev­er, since No­vem­ber 8, the coun­try has been af­fect­ed by a low-lev­el trough that is al­so af­fect­ing oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion.

Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell said that while the un­fore­seen ex­pen­di­ture had been bud­get­ed for in the 2024-25 main or sup­ple­men­tary bud­gets, the de­ci­sion made af­ter Hur­ri­cane Beryl in Ju­ly to sus­pend the Fis­cal Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Act and in­voke the Hur­ri­cane Clause in in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments, would as­sist.

“I want to em­pha­size that for the many who crit­i­cize the gov­ern­ment for be­ing pru­dent by sus­pend­ing and in­vok­ing the debt re­pay­ment clause that we could have the nec­es­sary liq­uid­i­ty to deal with those sit­u­a­tions,” he said, not­ing that as­sis­tance will al­so have to be pro­vid­ed to fam­i­lies af­fect­ed by flood­ing and/or land­slides.

“We are go­ing to have to pro­vide as­sis­tance to peo­ple to help clean up their homes and in some in­stances, we are go­ing to in fact re­build or move per­sons out of the ar­eas in which they are liv­ing be­cause of the risks that have now de­vel­oped from some of the land­slides.”

“As a gov­ern­ment we are go­ing to do every­thing to make sure we have the fis­cal space to be able to re­spond to the var­i­ous chal­lenges that we face. This is com­ing at enor­mous fi­nan­cial chal­lenges to the tax­pay­ers of this coun­try, we are go­ing to spend enor­mous sums of mon­ey, fix­ing the roads, ad­dress­ing the bridges, do­ing both riv­er and sea de­fences,” PM Mitchell said.

At least one per­son died, and sev­er­al homes were af­fect­ed as a re­sult of the rains. —ST. GEORGE’S, Grena­da (CMC)