sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The de­ci­sion to build a 250 unit hous­ing set­tle­ment on the eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive flood­plains of the Ca­roni Riv­er is now the sub­ject of de­bate.

How­ev­er, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says he is stay­ing out of the blame game and will in­stead fo­cus on find­ing an en­gi­neer­ing so­lu­tion to Green­vale’s prob­lem.

Speak­ing at CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Sinanan said he plans to tra­verse the Ca­roni Riv­er to­day to find a so­lu­tion to the mas­sive flood­ing which sent Green­vale res­i­dents scur­ry­ing to their roofs two weeks ago.

Sinanan said the T&T Coast Guard will ac­com­pa­ny him along with a team of en­gi­neer­ing ex­perts from the Min­istry of Works. Ac­cus­ing for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal of play­ing pol­i­tics with the res­i­dents, Sinanan de­nied that the flood­ing was as a re­sult of poor main­te­nance of drains and wa­ter­cours­es. He said eight months ago, Cab­i­net ap­proved monies for an ex­ten­sive de-silt­ing pro­gramme.

“Un­der that pro­gramme, we ac­com­plished 230 projects, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of which were in his con­stituen­cy but even that project could not have stopped the lev­el of flood­ing that we ex­pe­ri­enced be­cause of ex­ten­sive rain­fall,” Sinanan added.

He al­so said all the flood pumps were fixed. “This year for the first time in 15 to 20 years we have all the pumps work­ing. When we went down the Ca­roni riv­er we saw pumps work­ing that they have not been work­ing in 10 years in the South El So­cor­ro Riv­er. When I toured in 2016, none of those pumps was work­ing but I saw three pumps work­ing this week. Eight months ago we ap­proved monies to im­prove the pumps and flood­gates of T&T,” he ex­plained.

With re­gard to Green­vale, Sinanan as­sured that res­i­dents will not be left to face such flood­ing again. “I will go with the Coast Guard in­to the Ca­roni Riv­er and in­to the Manuel Con­go Riv­er so we can find an en­gi­neer­ing so­lu­tion for Green­vale. It was the last Min­istry of Hous­ing that put 250 fam­i­lies in Green­vale at the time. So I wouldn’t want to go in­to whose fault it is. Rather we will fo­cus on find­ing a so­lu­tion for Green­vale,” Sinanan added.

He not­ed that T&T ex­pe­ri­enced 14 inch­es of rain­fall in two and a half days when the month­ly av­er­age is eight inch­es.

“That vol­ume of rain­fall did not hap­pen un­der the UNC and there is noth­ing the UNC could have done to stop what hap­pened. This is what is a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. It is a sim­ple case of the vol­ume of rain­fall and the ca­pac­i­ty of the chan­nel. That was con­firmed by all the ex­perts. There is no way our in­fra­struc­ture could have han­dled that rain­fall bear­ing in mind the chal­lenges we had with the lo­ca­tion of Green­vale.

Sinanan said af­ter his tour on the rivers, en­gi­neer­ing ex­perts will come up with a so­lu­tion and a meet­ing will be held with res­i­dents to­mor­row.

“We are go­ing to look at the so­lu­tions for Green­vale and we will do every­thing hu­man­ly pos­si­ble to min­imise this sort of suf­fer­ing,” Sinanan added.