Sascha Wil­son

Plagued by fre­quent flood­ing due to poor drainage, res­i­dents of Dow and Aripero Vil­lages in South Trinidad are call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to fix this prob­lem.

This comes af­ter res­i­dents and pro­pri­etors were hit by an­oth­er bout of flood­ing on Mon­day.

While some mo­torists risked dri­ving through flood­wa­ters along the South­ern Main Road, re­sult­ing in a few ve­hi­cles stalling, oth­ers sought al­ter­na­tive routes.

Mean­while, res­i­dents looked on help­less­ly as their prop­er­ties were in­un­dat­ed with wa­ter, some of which even flowed in­to homes.

Res­i­dent Mark Chine­mil­ly, who runs Dav­ey’s Ra­di­a­tor Works down­stairs his home at Aripero Vil­lage, yes­ter­day said res­i­dents are to­tal­ly fed up. Grap­pling with this prob­lem since he moved in­to the com­mu­ni­ty 17 years ago, Chine­mil­ly said they made sev­er­al com­plaints and sent nu­mer­ous cor­re­spon­dence to var­i­ous bod­ies and rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­quest­ing help but noth­ing has been done.

“Every time it rains, in the space to 20 to 30 min­utes, we get flood...It takes about four to five hours for the floods to go down,” he com­plained.

Es­ti­mat­ing that he suf­fered more than $25,000 in loss­es dur­ing Mon­day’s floods, Chine­mil­ly said the wa­ter seeped in­to his BMW, soak­ing the in­te­ri­or, while his busi­ness was al­so af­fect­ed, and his fridge was dam­aged.

“I have plen­ty pow­er tools, weld­ing plants, pres­sure wash­er, since I here I had to change about four fridge al­ready be­cause of the flood­ing,” he com­plained.

Con­cerned about the well-be­ing of his sev­en-month-old ba­by, he said dur­ing and fol­low­ing the floods, snakes, scor­pi­ons and caimans would sur­face.

“It is al­so un­healthy be­cause it al­so has nasty cesspit wa­ter run­ning in the drain,” he added.

Chine­mil­ly said his neigh­bours are so fed up that they have stopped com­plain­ing.

“They fed up, they don’t want to talk. Is about 27 to 30 years they hav­ing this prob­lem,” he said.

Chine­mil­ly be­lieves the on­ly way to solve this prob­lem is with prop­er drainage.

Mean­while, Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe vis­it­ed the res­i­dents on Tues­day and wrote to the Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan on the is­sue.

The let­ter stat­ed, “Res­i­dents have in­di­cat­ed that the lack of prop­er drainage in­fra­struc­ture and main­te­nance of ex­ist­ing drains has con­tributed to these oc­cur­rences (floods). There is al­so a col­lapsed cul­vert which cross­es un­der the road­way in the vicin­i­ty of #3 South­ern Main Road, Dow Vil­lage close to Dav­ey’s Ra­di­a­tor that is in ur­gent re­pair as it re­stricts free flow of wa­ter to the main riv­er.

“The res­i­dents and com­muters are now plead­ing with the min­istry to give some ur­gent at­ten­tion to their plight to avoid fur­ther loss­es to their busi­ness­es and dam­age to their ve­hi­cles and their prop­er­ties.”

Bo­doe re­quest­ed that a team vis­it the area to as­sess and pro­vide a so­lu­tion to this is­sue. Bo­doe told Guardian Me­dia that he was sub­se­quent­ly con­tact­ed by the Di­rec­tor of Drainage on be­half of the min­is­ter and a team is ex­pect­ed to meet with the res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty to­mor­row (Fri­day).