Shas­tri Boodan

A faulty wa­ter pump failed to bring any re­lief for flood vic­tims at Ca­roni Vil­lage on Thurs­day night.

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly spent the night in the com­mu­ni­ty and spoke with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day morn­ing around 6 am.

Ram­bal­ly said the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion brought in three small pumps that were not mak­ing any im­pact.

He said the Min­istry of Works sent in a mas­sive 12-inch diesel pump on the back of a truck and trail­er but that the pump start­ed and failed af­ter two to five min­utes of op­er­a­tion and did not pump any wa­ter out. Ram­bal­ly said up to 7 am the vil­lagers were ea­ger­ly wait­ing on a tech­ni­cian to ser­vice the pump.

Ram­bal­ly said parts of the Ca­roni Vil­lage flood­ed when the riv­er burst its banks at sev­er­al points.

He said this in­clud­ed Per­sad Street, Gand­hi Street and en­vi­rons.

Ram­bal­ly said when works were done to the riv­er bank to the north of the vil­lage the old riv­er em­bank­ment was not im­proved. He said wa­ter crossed the new em­bank­ment and the old em­bank­ment and in­to the com­mu­ni­ty.

Ram­bal­ly added that the sluice gate out­side of the riv­er em­bank­ment is non­func­tion­al and al­lows wa­ter to flow in faster than it can ex­it.

How­ev­er, Ram­bal­ly said he has spo­ken with Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al Rawi, who has been at­ten­tive to his calls.

Ram­bal­ly said, “There have been over 100 homes that have been over­run with flood wa­ter and there is two feet of wa­ter in some homes.”

Chaguanas West MP Dinesh Rambally, centre, speaks with villagers Keshu Ganpath, left, and Rudranath Indarsingh as they wade through flood waters at Persad Street, Caroni.

Shastri Boodan

Ram­bal­ly said the res­i­dents demon­strat­ed ear­li­er this year to get works done on the river­bank be­cause not enough was done dur­ing the dry sea­son to pre­pare for the im­pact of rains in the wet sea­son. He said some works were done on the bank in a “piece­meal” fash­ion while the sluice gate was not at­tend­ed to.

He said the works un­der­tak­en at the river­bank in La Paille has man­aged to hold out un­der the pres­sure.

Op­po­si­tion MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh, a res­i­dent of Gand­hi Street, said he had to re­lo­cate his el­der­ly sick moth­er whose home was flood­ed out. In­dars­ingh, who is al­so the MP for Cou­va South, said he has been plead­ing with the au­thor­i­ties to widen some of the nar­row drains and cylin­der cross­ing.

In­dars­ingh said “The is­sues can be dealt with in the re­duc­tion in flood­ing. The Min­is­ter of Works and the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment needs to work with the MP in a more fo­cused man­ner to deal with the em­bank­ment, sluice gate and the widen­ing of the cylin­der cross­ing.” In­dars­ingh con­tin­ued, “The Min­istry of Works has been al­lo­cat­ed $22 bil­lion in the last 7 sev­en years, where mon­ey is gone.” Vil­lager Teshu Gan­path said garbage left be­hind by road clean-up crews and oth­er en­ti­ties some­times end up in the wa­ter cours­es if it is not re­moved in a time­ly man­ner.”