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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

TPRC says it’s ready for wet season

by

246 days ago
20240618
Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation (TPRC) chairman  Desell Austin during an interview with GML yesterday.

Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation (TPRC) chairman Desell Austin during an interview with GML yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

De­spite the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice’s fore­cast for an ac­tive hur­ri­cane sea­son and a “volatile and er­rat­ic” Wet Sea­son, Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) chair­man De­sell Austin says they are ready to re­spond to any even­tu­al­i­ties.

Austin ex­plained that since com­ing in­to of­fice in Au­gust 2023, through re­gion­al co­or­di­nat­ing meet­ings, they had adopt­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to tack­ling is­sues with­in the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty.

“(We) have part­nered with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s Drainage Di­vi­sion and High­ways Di­vi­sion for bet­ter co­or­di­na­tion. Where you find our lo­cal drains that run in­to ma­jor drains, we are unit­ing and en­sur­ing they are all cleaned,” he said.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, whether it is roads or rivers, dif­fer­ent road­ways or wa­ter­cours­es fall un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port or the re­spec­tive mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, and this has led to dif­fer­ent treat­ment of the is­sue based on avail­able fund­ing. Austin says he is mov­ing the cor­po­ra­tion away from point­ing fin­gers.

This fol­lows un­usu­al­ly pro­longed flood­ing at the Pasea in­ter­sec­tion on the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way’s east­bound lanes last week. All lanes and the Pasea Main Road re­mained in­un­dat­ed for hours af­ter an iso­lat­ed thun­der­storm.

Ac­cord­ing to Jlynn Roop­nar­ine, coun­cil­lor for Curepe/Pasea with­in the TPRC, a drain that runs un­der the high­way be­fore Ma­coya has be­come clogged. How­ev­er, the drains par­al­lel­ing the high­way were al­so blocked, lead­ing to the pro­longed floods last week. 

The TPRC chair­man added, “What I have done, hav­ing been a coun­cil­lor since 2016 is that I’ve iden­ti­fied those short­com­ings and moved away from the blame game. As much as we were in touch with the chief plan­ning en­gi­neer at the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s Drainage Di­vi­sion, we recog­nised that man­pow­er was need­ed. So we wouldn’t just pass the buck and say, ‘Hey, we’ll wait on you to do that,’ and we re­alise that man­pow­er was need­ed to get down there, as nasty as it was.”

The TPRC’s health team cleaned the drain along the high­way, but the block­age be­low the high­way still ex­ists. 

The TPRC stretch­es from Trinidad’s north coast, as far as Blan­chisseuse, to Cu­mu­to in the east, to Cunu­pia in the south, and to Mara­cas Val­ley in the west, en­com­pass­ing over 270,000 peo­ple. As a re­sult, the TPRC deals with sig­nif­i­cant floods to the south and land­slides in re­mote ar­eas to the north. Cov­er­ing the en­tire area dur­ing times of dis­as­ter not on­ly pos­es a lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenge but al­so a fi­nan­cial one.

Austin ex­plained, “We’ve recog­nised that with oth­er lo­cal gov­ern­ments, the is­sue of fund­ing would arise. But what are we to do in this term? Are we to just sit there and com­plain about the fund­ing or find ways to get it done?”

Austin con­tin­ued, “I’ve not­ed on both sides of the fence, even in oth­er cor­po­ra­tions that are UNC-run, we recog­nise that they are part­ner­ing with pri­vate bod­ies. We, too, are do­ing that. We are in the largest co­op­er­a­tion by pop­u­la­tion. And we have sev­er­al pri­vate bod­ies wait­ing and al­ways there to as­sist.”

This year, Austin said, “Through our Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit, there were sev­er­al tours in malls and schools, and deal­ing with vol­un­teers. We have a full com­ple­ment of vol­un­teers. We’ve got­ten the sand­bags and every­thing nec­es­sary to treat the is­sues once they ar­rive. And I think we are very much ready, at least in an­tic­i­pa­tion of this type of sea­son.”


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