For sev­er­al years, the State has spent sig­nif­i­cant sums on drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion, with much fo­cus on flood al­le­vi­a­tion and pre­ven­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) over fis­cal 2018 to 2022, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $556.7 mil­lion was spent on ef­forts to mit­i­gate flood­ing in low ly­ing ar­eas.

These com­prised riv­er clear­ing, in­fra­struc­ture re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, ero­sion con­trol, up­grades to pump sta­tions and im­prove­ments to drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion in­fra­struc­ture in the var­i­ous lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions.

Among these, the bulk was spent by the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment on drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion in the var­i­ous cor­po­ra­tions amount­ing to $298 mil­lion which was doc­u­ment­ed in the Es­ti­mates of De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme.

And ac­cord­ing to the 2023 PSIP, for this fis­cal year, $248 mil­lion is bud­get­ed to lim­it flood­ing via the cre­ation of a mod­ern drainage sys­tem.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon even af­ter spend­ing such ex­or­bi­tant amounts, flood­ing woes ap­pear to get worse with each year.

“This begs the ques­tion— is the State re­ceiv­ing val­ue for mon­ey when they hire con­trac­tors to im­ple­ment their flood mit­i­ga­tion poli­cies, es­pe­cial­ly since even af­ter all these monies are spent, we have con­sis­tent flood­ing events?” he told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Fur­ther, he asked whether Gov­ern­ment was ad­her­ing to rec­om­men­da­tions of the con­sul­tants and en­gi­neers it con­tin­ues to hir­ing to ad­vise on the best mech­a­nisms to mit­i­gate flood­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Ar­joon, apart from cli­mate change, part of the rea­son for flood­ing is that both pub­lic and pri­vate hous­ing de­vel­op­ers are build­ing on flood prone ar­eas, in con­tra­ven­tion to the rec­om­men­da­tions and guide­lines.

And flood­ing there­fore, car­ries heavy eco­nom­ic loss­es and can slow GDP growth—a cost which far out­weighs the amount spent by the State in flood pre­ven­tion ef­forts. “Busi­ness­es es­pe­cial­ly Mi­cro and Small en­ter­pris­es are forced to close for sev­er­al days due to the dam­age to their in­fra­struc­ture.

“Man­u­fac­tur­ers can face dam­ages to es­sen­tial equip­ment, and it could take time to im­port re­place­ment parts, which de­lays their op­er­a­tions. When busi­ness­es are closed, it not on­ly hurts their sales rev­enues but al­so pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and costs dai­ly paid em­ploy­ees part of their wages,” Ar­joon ex­plained.

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) Richie Sookhai al­so said there was a 20 to 30 per cent low­er than av­er­age cus­tomer turnout with­in Ch­agua­nas this week.

In terms of work­er turnout, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent of the work­force was af­fect­ed as they were ei­ther ma­rooned by the flood­ed roads or were af­fect­ed di­rect­ly by the flood­ing from where they resided, he added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, flood­ing presents more cost bur­dens to the State when floods and land­slides dam­age pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture such as roads, bridges etc as Gov­ern­ment has to find funds for re­pair which could oth­er­wise have been spent more pro­duc­tive­ly else­where, and even add to the debt bur­den, Ar­joon out­lined.

On the oth­er hand, this can ben­e­fit con­trac­tors hired by the State to un­der­go these works, he said.

He al­so out­lined that T&T is cov­ered un­der the Caribbean Cat­a­stro­phe Risk In­sur­ance Fa­cil­i­ty (CCRIF), and re­ceived pay­outs af­ter heavy rain­falls re­sult­ed in flood­ing and land­slides.

In 2021 this coun­try re­ceived US$2.4 mil­lion, and a to­tal of US$9.5 mil­lion in 2017 and 2018 giv­en the ex­cess rain­fall ex­pe­ri­enced in those years.

“These funds should ide­al­ly be paid to com­pen­sate flood vic­tims,” Ar­joon said, adding that for sev­er­al years, many house­holds that ex­pe­ri­enced se­vere dam­age to their prop­er­ties from flood­ing, had lit­tle choice but to take loans from banks to be able to pay for the nec­es­sary re­pairs to their prop­er­ty and ac­quire new ve­hi­cles and fur­ni­ture. “Many are low-in­come earn­ers, who re­cent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced job-re­lat­ed fi­nan­cial stress from the pan­dem­ic and al­so face the ad­di­tion­al bur­dened of the ex­or­bi­tant cost of liv­ing through high food and fu­el prices,” he added.

Agri­cul­tur­al im­pact

Se­vere flood­ing has al­so im­pact­ed the na­tion’s food bas­ket, said Dr Omar­dath Ma­haraj, Agri­cul­tur­al Econ­o­mist.

He said while the sit­u­a­tion is still pre­vail­ing and of­fi­cial field as­sess­ments have not yet be­gun, “it is al­ready clear that tons of food pro­duc­tion, hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in in­vest­ments and rur­al in­fra­struc­ture and price­less hu­man mo­ti­va­tion was washed down the drain.”

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as a na­tion­al dis­as­ter af­fect­ing the lives and liveli­hoods of 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple, di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, Ma­haraj said T&T’s agri-food pro­duc­tion out­look for the next three months is wor­ry­ing.

This, as he not­ed, ex­ten­sive flood­ing and rain­fall have im­pact­ed the coun­try’s ma­jor food crop projects with some farm­ers es­ti­mat­ing a near to to­tal wipe-out in the Or­ange Grove and Plum Mi­tan Food Crop projects.

Al­so, oth­er ma­jor food fields across the coun­try have been reel­ing with loss for the past few months.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ma­haraj said the in­shore fish­ery which sus­tains liveli­hoods in fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties is al­so dam­aged by land ef­flu­ent.

“The loss of food pro­duc­tion and live­stock is usu­al­ly most wor­ry­ing, to the ex­tent that con­sumer con­fi­dence, farm op­er­a­tions, food safe­ty, and agri­cul­tur­al and rur­al in­fra­struc­ture can han­dle pre­vail­ing weath­er con­di­tions re­mains ob­vi­ous­ly doubt­ful. The dam­age in­volves flood­ing, food se­cu­ri­ty and dis­ease,” Ma­haraj fur­ther ex­plained.

He em­pha­sised that the loss of agri­cul­ture is not sim­ply the loss of food plants, an­i­mals and aquat­ic stock. This is in ad­di­tion to the loss of farmer mo­ti­va­tion, work ef­fort, land prepa­ra­tion and farm ar­chi­tec­ture, var­i­ous equip­ment and ma­chin­ery, seeds and germplasm and on-farm ex­per­i­ments as well as rur­al in­fra­struc­ture (in­clud­ing ac­cess roads, bridges, wa­ter sources and re­serves), he said.

More­so, Ma­haraj said such se­vere flood­ing sug­gests that T&T is in an era of los­ing the abil­i­ty to feed its cit­i­zens and there­fore, de­mands the is­sues of food, agri­cul­ture, and cli­mate change be raised on the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­da. “The abil­i­ty to feed our­selves in­to the fu­ture should con­cern every cit­i­zen.

“Af­ter sev­er­al years of eco­nom­ic hard­ship, dam­age to the ma­jor food pro­duc­ing ar­eas from flood­ing, di­lap­i­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture, ten­an­cy and oth­er is­sues, it is a bur­den to main­tain our de­pen­den­cy on food im­ports cou­pled with food price in­fla­tion and the ur­gent need to re­turn val­ue and op­por­tu­ni­ties to rur­al agri­cul­tur­al and fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” Ma­haraj said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he warned that dri­ven by scarci­ty, fresh pro­duce and pre­pared food prices will re­main high un­til the end of the year. And scarci­ty and qual­i­ty will be is­sues with goods en­ter­ing the mar­ket, he added.

Fur­ther, Ma­haraj said, with low con­fi­dence in the lo­cal food sys­tem, there will be an even stronger de­mand for im­port­ed foods im­pact­ing neg­a­tive­ly on both the pock­ets of our farm­ers and con­sumers.

“Chal­leng­ing our own food sov­er­eign­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, in times of dis­as­ter, we de­pend on im­port­ed foods – canned, processed, pack­aged, dried, fresh, chilled and frozen. Oth­er glob­al lo­gis­tics is­sues in­di­cate that our im­port­ed food sup­ply is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly risky and more ex­pen­sive,” he al­so not­ed. How­ev­er, he said a pos­i­tive sign is that Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein has tak­en an ap­proach of greater con­sul­ta­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and co­or­di­na­tion of the al­ready lim­it­ed re­sources since the sec­tor has grown ac­cus­tomed to do­ing more with less.

Time­ly sup­port through flood re­lief to farm­ers – crop and live­stock and rur­al in­fra­struc­ture re­me­di­a­tion- re­quires in­ter­ven­tion from the high­est lev­el, Ma­haraj sug­gest­ed.

He al­so ad­vised that a de­tailed work plan for main­te­nance of the food crop ar­eas should al­so be de­vel­oped by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture to safe­guard lo­cal food sup­ply and farmer liveli­hoods con­sid­er­ing all risks – nat­ur­al or man-made.

Ac­cord­ing to the PSIP 2022, pro­vi­sion was made for Wa­ter Man­age­ment and Flood Con­trol (Or­ange Grove Food Crop Project).

This site was iden­ti­fied for the first phase and in­tend­ed to ben­e­fit 250 farm­ers.

Re­pairs and up­grades to em­bank­ments have been on­go­ing at low ly­ing agri­cul­tur­al lands and at the edge of the Nar­i­va Swamp to pro­tect lands from ris­ing wa­ter lev­els dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

The En­gi­neer­ing Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries fo­cused on im­prov­ing drainage through the re­place­ment of drainage pumps in se­lect­ed ar­eas to chan­nel ex­cess wa­ter in­to the rivers.

Ten­ders are cur­rent­ly in­vit­ed for the sup­ply and in­stal­la­tion of four drainage pumps for the Plum Mi­tan Food Crop Project.

Ma­haraj said this pro­vides 600 acres of us­able land for new pro­duc­tion for 250 ac­tive farm­ers in the Biche and Plum Mi­tan ar­eas.

Put to­geth­er, he not­ed, flood re­lief from the State will not save the sec­tor from its cur­rent down­ward spi­ral as crop and live­stock pro­duc­tion were not sole­ly af­fect­ed.

He out­lined rur­al in­fra­struc­ture, agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads, on-farm roads, farm in­come, debt ser­vice on loans tak­en by farm­ers, and the liveli­hoods of rur­al and agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties were dis­rupt­ed.

On the con­sumer end, he re­it­er­at­ed cus­tomers can ex­pect the mar­ket to be weak in the va­ri­ety of lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al com­modi­ties and strong on prices as de­mand in­creas­es to­wards the Christ­mas sea­son and un­til crop pro­duc­tion re­cov­ers and sta­bilis­es across the coun­try.

In mov­ing for­ward, he em­pha­sised there must be a fo­cus on build­ing the re­silience of farm­ing and fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties to strength­en their adap­tive ca­pac­i­ty and re­duce their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

Hence, any ef­fort go­ing for­ward by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, min­istries and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions should be sup­port­ed with the need­ed sen­si­tiv­i­ty and ur­gency in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

“In the short-run as in­come falls for farm­ing, fish­ing and vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, pol­i­cy-mak­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors need to en­sure the so­cial safe­ty nets are re­spon­sive, that per­sons of dif­fer­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances do not fall be­low the min­i­mum liv­ing stan­dard and that any such mea­sure is not abused,” Ma­haraj fur­ther ad­vised.