Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan says Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar should pay at­ten­tion to the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

On Wednes­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions to take le­gal ac­tion against those who tam­pered with wa­ter­cours­es and whose un­law­ful ac­tions con­tributed to flood­ing.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Sinanan de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment as “strange.”

He ar­gued that some lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives who toured flood-af­fect­ed ar­eas in her Pe­nal con­stituen­cy on a De­fence Force truck were the very in­di­vid­u­als who need­ed to act.

Sinanan added that may­ors and chair­per­sons of the cor­po­ra­tions im­pact­ed by floods fol­low­ing Tues­day’s tor­ren­tial rain­fall were re­spon­si­ble for tak­ing ac­tion. He point­ed out that the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) had re­peat­ed­ly high­light­ed is­sues such as un­reg­u­lat­ed con­struc­tion and breach­es of build­ing codes, but cor­po­ra­tions failed to re­spond.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some ar­eas most af­fect­ed are where the least ac­tion has been tak­en by cor­po­ra­tions. We have writ­ten to these cor­po­ra­tions sev­er­al times, re­quest­ing ac­tion, and none has been tak­en. So, to now is­sue such a call is mis­placed. It is the cor­po­ra­tions’ job to serve no­tices,” Sinanan said.

In ad­di­tion to serv­ing stop and de­mo­li­tion no­tices, Sinanan not­ed that mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions had the au­thor­i­ty to car­ry out de­mo­li­tions.

Tues­day’s tor­ren­tial rain­fall left res­i­dents of Pe­nal, Debe, San Fran­cique, and Wood­land grap­pling with dev­as­tat­ing floods. Sinanan ex­plained that T&T was cur­rent­ly in the peak of the wet sea­son. He said am­ple warn­ings of heavy rain­fall and po­ten­tial flood­ing had been is­sued, es­pe­cial­ly for low-ly­ing ar­eas.

“The min­istry has been con­duct­ing drainage pro­grammes, clear­ing wa­ter­cours­es, and has com­plet­ed near­ly 600 projects this year—many of them in the af­fect­ed ar­eas.”

Sinanan al­so ex­plained that many of the flood-prone ar­eas were his­tor­i­cal­ly swamp­lands. De­spite de­vel­op­ment, he said, these re­gions re­main the low­est-ly­ing ar­eas in the coun­try, mak­ing them in­her­ent­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to wa­ter re­ten­tion.

Sinanan re­vealed that while sev­er­al drainage stud­ies had­been con­duct­ed over the years, a com­pre­hen­sive na­tion­al drainage plan had been lack­ing. This changed in 2018 when the Gov­ern­ment, with spon­sor­ship from the An­dean De­vel­op­ment Bank, ini­ti­at­ed a Na­tion­al Drainage Plan. The plan, now com­plet­ed, in­cludes stud­ies on ar­eas such as down­town Port-of-Spain, the west­ern penin­su­la, and parts of San Fer­nan­do that were pre­vi­ous­ly ex­clud­ed.

“We have al­ready start­ed im­ple­ment­ing projects out­lined in the plan with­out wait­ing for every­thing to be fi­nalised,” Sinanan said. —Kevon Felmine