SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Two of the coun­try's largest re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions have blamed wide­spread flood­ing just over a week ago on un­planned de­vel­op­ments.

Chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC) Anil Juter­am ad­mit­ted that the north­east­ern re­gion has a prob­lem with il­le­gal struc­tures be­ing con­struct­ed de­plet­ing the coun­try's pro­tec­tive veg­e­ta­tion, and blamed two state agen­cies—the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands (COSL) and the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (TCPD)—for fail­ing to car­ry out their du­ties.

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Kwasi Robin­son con­firmed that he, too, has faced an up­hill bat­tle to con­trol il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Squat­ters and de­vel­op­ers, who most­ly build on the hill­side, have been break­ing the law, with the degra­da­tion of the land con­tribut­ing to wide­spread flood­ing in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties.

Af­ter two days of heavy rain, walls col­lapsed, roads be­came im­pas­si­ble, cars slid in­to ravines, sev­er­al fam­i­lies were ma­rooned in their homes and many sus­tained loss­es. The dam­age amount­ed to hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in the re­gions.

Last week, in the af­ter­math of the flood­ing, Tu­na­puna MP Es­mond Forde com­plained about peo­ple build­ing in hilly ar­eas of his con­stituen­cy where they are not sup­posed to. He said that he had no idea if they had ob­tained TCPD and cor­po­ra­tion ap­proval.

Some of the struc­tures lacked gut­ters and drains, al­low­ing wa­ter to ac­cu­mu­late.

Tay­lor Street, St Ce­celia Road, and Gold­en View in El Do­ra­do, ar­eas which nev­er flood­ed in the past, were af­fect­ed as a re­sult of the heavy rains, ac­cord­ing to Forde.

Juter­am: The Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands has failed mis­er­ably

On Wednes­day, Juter­am dis­closed there were over 43 un­planned de­vel­op­ments in his re­gion, span­ning from Va­len­cia to Matu­ra, which were built on state lands. There are over 75,000 res­i­dents in the re­gion, he added.

"We have a se­ri­ous is­sue in terms of de­vel­op­ments tak­ing place in our re­gion. San­gre Grande has the most amount of un­planned de­vel­op­ments." Re­fer­ring to the per­pe­tra­tors as "am­bas­sadors of wrong­do­ing", he claimed that wa­ter cours­es are be­ing tam­pered with and blocked.

He be­lieves that the TCPD ap­pears to be un­aware of what is go­ing on. "I be­lieve one should not sit in an of­fice in Port-of-Spain or Tu­na­puna and sign off on any (com­mer­cial or res­i­den­tial) plan with­out con­sult­ing the cor­po­ra­tion or the lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty."

De­vel­op­ers have been for­mu­lat­ing strate­gies to beat the sys­tem for their ben­e­fit, he said.

Juter­am was al­so crit­i­cal of the COSL for not do­ing its job.

"The Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands has failed in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties to pro­tect the green­ery. They have failed mis­er­ably."

Juter­am stat­ed that if the cor­po­ra­tion in­ter­venes in these de­vel­op­ments, it may be charged with tres­pass­ing on state lands.

Ac­cord­ing to Juter­am, the COSL in­tends to de­mol­ish the il­le­gal prop­er­ties with the cor­po­ra­tion's back­hoe and ex­ca­va­tor. But he added, "We are not go­ing to put our­selves at risk to do that. They have to get the army or who­ev­er to do that. I am not go­ing to send cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ees to be killed for do­ing the work that a next state agency should do."

He said many of the oc­cu­pants of the il­le­gal struc­tures live be­low the pover­ty line and, as a re­sult, it would re­quire care­ful dis­cus­sions at all lev­els.

Robin­son: There must be bet­ter lead­er­ship and man­age­ment by me at the cor­po­ra­tion

Like Juter­am, Robin­son is al­so faced with the same predica­ment.

Un­able to give an ex­act fig­ure for squat­ters and de­vel­op­ers who have en­croached on state lands in the re­gion, Robin­son on­ly said "we have sev­er­al".

"They are all over the hill­side but at the same time, we al­so have a sit­u­a­tion where peo­ple are liv­ing there."

These peo­ple, Robin­son said, are the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety.

"We just have to do bet­ter as a state agency. We need to im­prove the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of our in­ter­nal work­ers. Even my de­ci­sion as chair­man has to be im­proved. Whether some­body builds il­le­gal­ly or not it all comes down to my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. What is re­quired from me, per­son­al­ly, as chair­man, is bet­ter lead­er­ship and bet­ter man­age­ment at the cor­po­ra­tion. Not all these prob­lems are solved by mon­ey."

A family in their home surrounded by floodwaters at Leemond Road, North Oropouche, via Sangre Grande.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

He promised not to shirk his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in look­ing af­ter the needs of the 260,000 res­i­dents in the re­gion and felt more en­force­ment was need­ed to go af­ter those who il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py state lands.

Robin­son said in­di­vid­u­als who erect il­le­gal struc­tures are dealt with via a le­gal process.

"We serve them, but in most in­stances, we com­mu­ni­cate with them."

The chair­man said the cor­po­ra­tion has iden­ti­fied two il­le­gal struc­tures in Arou­ca.

One is on Wa­ter­pipe Road, which was de­mol­ished by the cor­po­ra­tion.

"On a long week­end, the per­son put back up a con­crete struc­ture and got a T&TEC con­nec­tion."

The oth­er in­volves a re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tion that built its place of wor­ship on a riv­er bank. "We are go­ing through the le­gal chal­lenges to deal with that," he added.

Robin­son felt com­pro­mise would be re­quired on all sides.

"We will not get through this by the State tak­ing the strong arm or the peo­ple do­ing what­ev­er they want."

LSA source: 350 squat­ting set­tle­ments across the coun­try

Ac­cord­ing to a source at the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA), there are "55,000 to 60,000 squat­ting struc­tures" on 350 squat­ting set­tle­ments or un­planned de­vel­op­ments across the coun­try.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,000 il­le­gal oc­cu­pants live in 40 squat­ting dis­tricts on pri­vate prop­er­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the source, there were 251 squat­ting sites when the State Lands Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion Tenure Act 25 of 1998 was passed by the Gov­ern­ment.

The act was en­act­ed to pre­vent and con­trol squat­ting on pub­lic land.

At the time, 23,000 peo­ple had ap­plied for cer­tifi­cates of com­fort.

Now there are 60,000 struc­tures. "If each struc­ture has an av­er­age of four oc­cu­pants, we are talk­ing about 240,000 peo­ple or squat­ters. That is our squat­ting pop­u­la­tion."

The source es­ti­mat­ed there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 il­le­gal struc­tures in the To­co/San­gre Grande re­gion alone. The largest con­cen­tra­tion of squat­ters is on state lands in San­gre Grande and Point Fortin.

In 2020, the source said Cab­i­net ap­proved a ten­an­cy pol­i­cy aimed at pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty of tenure for cer­tain cat­e­gories of squat­ters and oc­cu­pants who had been oc­cu­py­ing lands be­fore June 2014.

The COSL has the pow­er to re­move any­one found oc­cu­py­ing state lands af­ter 2014.

"The rate of LSA try­ing to reg­u­larise is very slow, so we can­not keep pace with the num­ber of un­planned de­vel­op­ments."

The source said many of the squat­ting sites have been built close to or on the hill­sides which con­tributes to a faster run-off. "The wa­ter flows down. It is not con­trolled. Def­i­nite­ly, it will cause flood­ing down­stream."

Hous­es and build­ings have al­so been erect­ed in flood­plain ar­eas.

"Whether they have Town and Coun­try ap­proval and drainage ap­proval is an­oth­er sto­ry. When places are de­vel­op­ing pret­ty fast and there isn't a prop­er de­vel­op­ment plan you will have that kind of ef­fect."

Anil Juteram

RALPH BANWARIE

Civ­il en­gi­neer: Fund na­tion­al drainage study to make da­ta-dri­ven de­ci­sions

Cli­mate change, lack of main­te­nance of wa­ter cours­es, dump­ing of ob­jects in wa­ter chan­nels, and un­planned de­vel­op­ments, "es­pe­cial­ly peo­ple who build on the riv­er banks", ac­cord­ing to  Dr Don Samuel, are all con­tribut­ing fac­tors to the fre­quent floods.

He stat­ed that this was now un­prece­dent­ed, as the wa­ter was find­ing its way in­to homes that had nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly flood­ed.

"Es­sen­tial­ly, the ca­pac­i­ty of drainage in­fra­struc­ture has been ex­ceed­ed due to the in­ef­fi­cien­cies cre­at­ed by these fac­tors."

Samuel, who re­cent­ly called for a na­tion­al drainage study, said some peo­ple felt this was not need­ed since the rec­om­men­da­tions of pre­vi­ous stud­ies were not im­ple­ment­ed.

"Since pre­vi­ous stud­ies were done weath­er pat­terns as well as the phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of rivers, chan­nels and wa­ter cours­es, have changed."

He said one out­come of this study should be a land use map and flood warn­ing maps.

"Res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial, and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ments con­tribute to sur­face wa­ter runoff, so a land use map will cap­ture base­line da­ta on new de­vel­op­ments and fu­ture de­vel­op­ments which could then be cor­re­lat­ed with ar­eas of flood­ing."

Samuel said the short-term rec­om­men­da­tion for peren­ni­al flood­ing was to de­silt rivers be­fore the rainy sea­son and the 14 cor­po­ra­tions should be pro­vid­ed with ad­e­quate fund­ing to clean box drains.

"The long-term so­lu­tion is to as­sign fund­ing to the na­tion­al drainage study so that da­ta-dri­ven de­ci­sions could be made with­in the next ten years. It is im­por­tant that the out­comes of the study are im­ple­ment­ed and if there is a change in the po­lit­i­cal land­scape it would not be shelved."

If T&T were to be hit by a hur­ri­cane, Samuel said the flood­ing would be ex­ac­er­bat­ed to a sit­u­a­tion ob­served at glob­al flood­ing events lead­ing to se­vere dam­age and fa­tal­i­ties. "Last week we saw a cit­i­zen (Tere­sa Lynch) lose her life try­ing to es­cape the floods. This is some­thing none of us wants to see, so we need to act now to min­imise the risks."

The Sun­day Guardian What­sApped a list of ques­tions on Wednes­day to Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son un­der whose purview TCDP falls, but she did not re­spond up to Fri­day.