Shas­tri Boodan

Res­i­dents of Cou­va North voiced their frus­tra­tion over long­stand­ing in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems dur­ing a cot­tage meet­ing with their Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Jear­lean John, on Wednes­day evening.

The meet­ing, held at Ma­habir’s res­i­dence in Pe­ters Field, pro­vid­ed com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak di­rect­ly with the new­ly elect­ed Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Flood­ing and poor road con­di­tions topped the list of con­cerns raised by res­i­dents.

In re­sponse, MP John ac­knowl­edged the ur­gency of the is­sues and pledged swift ac­tion.

“The is­sues with the flood­ing and the road — that is ex­pect­ed; it is some­thing we are work­ing on quite quick­ly, so you should see some re­lief com­ing your way,” she as­sured at­ten­dees.

John al­so an­nounced that, with­in the com­ing week, her of­fice would pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on flood mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies for the up­com­ing rainy sea­son.

“Rest as­sured that your UNC gov­ern­ment will be work­ing ex­treme­ly hard to re­lieve that bur­den — that fear you face every sin­gle year with the flood­ing,” she said.

She em­pha­sized that a more ag­gres­sive, pre­ven­tive ap­proach to flood­ing would be­gin in the 2026 dry sea­son, with plans to fo­cus on im­prov­ing roads crit­i­cal to agri­cul­ture in the re­gion.

Res­i­dents from near­by Fe­lic­i­ty, which falls with­in the Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy, al­so at­tend­ed the meet­ing and wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to raise con­cerns with a sit­ting MP.

Dwayne Per­sad, a Fe­lic­i­ty res­i­dent, high­light­ed the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road­way lead­ing to the Lakan Kar­ri­ah Cre­ma­tion Site and called for dredg­ing of the Cunu­pia Riv­er’s mouth to ease flood­ing dur­ing high tides.

Lo­cal farm­ers re­quest­ed re­pairs to the col­lapsed con­nec­tor road be­tween Fe­lic­i­ty and Wa­ter­loo — a vi­tal link for the agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Mean­while, res­i­dents Kim­ber­ly Neils De Sil­va and Col­in As­gar­ali urged the gov­ern­ment to re­ha­bil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ty sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, which they say have been ne­glect­ed for over a decade.

MP John promised to re­lay all con­cerns to the rel­e­vant min­istries and main­tain on­go­ing di­a­logue with con­stituents as so­lu­tions are de­vel­oped.