The Sen­ate had to sus­pend for 10 min­utes yes­ter­day, af­ter the ceil­ing of the Sen­ate’s south­ern cham­ber sprung a leak with the heavy rains.

The sit­u­a­tion oc­curred at 12.16 pm, while So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox was de­liv­er­ing her Bud­get ad­dress from one of the two speak­ing booths in the Cham­ber.

Feel­ing rain­drops, she said, “Ex­cuse me Madame Pres­i­dent I’m get­ting wet here…it has a leak.”

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo sus­pend­ed the sit­ting.

When it re­sumed, Sen­ate Vice Pres­i­dent Nigel De Fre­itas an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors could speak from their seats with masks on while Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors could use the sec­ond booth in the cham­ber.

In 2020, the day af­ter the Red House was re­opened fol­low­ing its re­fur­bish­ment, the Red House al­so sprung a leak.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, UDe­COTT said an en­gi­neer­ing and main­te­nence crew was dis­patched to fix the leak, once it was iden­ti­fied, in short or­der. —GA