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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Thieves still cleaning out flood-hit Manzanilla residents

by

Shaliza Hassanali
782 days ago
20221229
One of the damaged beach house properties along the Manzanilla/Mayaro Road which was affected by the flooding.

One of the damaged beach house properties along the Manzanilla/Mayaro Road which was affected by the flooding.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Home­own­ers along the Man­zanil­la stretch, who lost al­most every­thing dur­ing last month’s flood­ing, con­tin­ue to be hit by thieves who are cart­ing off thou­sands of dol­lars of their prop­er­ty.

The thieves have been re­mov­ing house­hold ap­pli­ances, fur­ni­ture, wa­ter tanks, air con­di­tion units, wa­ter pumps, 100-pound gas cylin­ders and gen­er­a­tors be­long­ing to the res­i­dents, some of whom had to flee their homes af­ter a huge por­tion of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road caved-in fol­low­ing flood­ing late last month.

The prob­lem al­so dis­rupt­ed the op­er­a­tions of sev­er­al beach hous­es, af­ter the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port closed the col­lapsed road. As a tem­po­rary mea­sure, the min­istry de­cid­ed to con­struct a $12 mil­lion tem­po­rary ac­cess road along­side the col­lapsed road­way to bring some re­lief to those af­fect­ed.

While con­trac­tors Kall­co Ltd and Na­mal­co Con­struc­tion con­tin­ue to work on the tem­po­rary road­way, thieves have been mak­ing the lives of the res­i­dents and beach house own­ers a night­mare.

In the midst of los­ing her en­tire beach house, Man­gree Sookhoo yes­ter­day said loot­ers cart­ed away nu­mer­ous items from her seafront prop­er­ty that caved-in dur­ing the pro­longed flood.

“They stole quite a lot,” Sookhoo said, her voice break­ing as she spoke to Guardian Me­dia while look­ing at the re­mains of the house, which leaned pre­car­i­ous­ly near the shore­line.

“My gas tank, a big stove, wa­ter tanks and oth­er stuff are gone,” she said.

She could not put a val­ue to the stolen items, say­ing she was to­tal­ly stressed out by the loss of the prop­er­ty.

Sookhoo re­cent­ly sold her cloth­ing store in Ari­ma and in­vest­ed in the beach house.

“This is how I start­ed earn­ing a dol­lar. Now every­thing is gone...the house and what was in­side it. It’s re­al­ly a hard blow not on­ly for me but all the oth­er res­i­dents who were af­fect­ed. I would say it is heart-break­ing.”

Yes­ter­day, she hired a van to re­move a few items she had sal­vaged.

“I have three beds in the house. I have to come back for that to­day oth­er­wise they will take it. I have to move fast.”

Sookhoo said when the home came tum­bling down, she moved out.

“I had no idea these ban­dits were steal­ing me out. If the neigh­bours didn’t no­ti­fy me, I would not have known.”

Next to Sookhoo, San­jay Lin­go kept a close eye on the A La Man­zan Beach House, which was par­tial­ly de­stroyed by the rag­ing wa­ter. He has been guard­ing the prop­er­ty for a month since thieves start­ed run­ning amok in the area.

Lin­go said two weeks ago, he saw four men lurk­ing around the prop­er­ty af­ter mid­night.

“I cre­at­ed an alarm and they ran to the back of the house and dis­ap­peared. I was too scared to come out.”

The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Lin­go said on check­ing the premis­es, he no­ticed the stor­age room with his wa­ter pump and gen­er­a­tor were tam­pered with.

“They tried to break the lock but were not suc­cess­ful.”

Lin­go said when he called the Man­zanil­la po­lice for help, they told him they were not au­tho­rised to en­ter the area.

They al­so called 999 but got no re­sponse.

The Man­zanil­la stretch spans 26 kilo­me­tres.

“They nev­er gave a rea­son why. We saw men dri­ving around in the wa­ter us­ing dinghies and walk­ing on the shore­line late at night. I sus­pect this is how they have been steal­ing from the hous­es. Since the road closed, to­day was the first time I see the po­lice pa­trolling up here.”

The reg­u­lar thefts, Lin­go said, have them un­easy and scared.

“These ban­dits don’t care. In the mid­dle of our trou­bles and ad­ver­si­ties, they are com­ing to thief from us. Some of them are so des­per­ate and thirsty, the flood wa­ter ain’t even sub­side and they com­ing af­ter us. What will they do next? Imag­ine you go­ing through stress and frus­tra­tion not know­ing how you will bounce back and they dis­tress­ing you fur­ther. And to com­pound mat­ters, the po­lice not help­ing.”

While Arfhard Mo­hammed was wad­ing through knee-high wa­ter in his yard, he saw a group of 20 men com­ing in his di­rec­tion.

“I know they were com­ing to steal so I start­ed to bawl out to four fam­i­ly mem­bers who were up­stairs and they rushed out­side. When the men saw all of us they backed down and hasti­ly left. This hap­pened short­ly af­ter noon. So, they are com­ing in the day and night to steal.”

Mo­hammed said the men were eye­ing his all-ter­rain ve­hi­cle (ATV) parked in the yard, which he us­es at night to pa­trol the area.

“I could tell you many homes have been tar­get­ed. We have be­come sit­ting ducks up here.”

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