Prakash queries electric pumps for floods

ST AUGUSTINE MP Prakash Ramadhar is questioning plans by Works Minister Rohan Sinanan to replace all the country’s anti-flood diesel water pumps with electric pumps.

At a briefing yesterday
(TUESDAY) at his constituency office Ramadhar responded to Sinanan’s disclosure at last Thursday’s post-Cabinet briefing, and addressed flooding issues caused byTropical Storm Karen.

“In a true disaster we might not have any electricity,” Ramadhar said, in support of retaining the existing system of diesel pumps.

Ramadhar said many of his flood-hit constituents felt hurt by recent remarks by government ministers that people should not have built in flood-prone areas dubbed “ponds.”

He said that since the dawn of mankind, people have lived along rivers such as the Ganges and the Nile. Ramadhar said many residents of Bamboo No3 may not have wished to live there but did so because it was an old settlement.

“People had agricultural lands and had to live close to their crops and livestock.”

He said Bamboo No3 was under the control of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC).

“It is wrong to say it is the victims to blame. I say to the Government deal with those who block our waterways.

“It is up to the State, before the rainy season, to ensure our rivers are clear. The reality of climate change is upon us.”

Ramadhar asked what sum, if any, would be allocated in the budget for the re-direction of watercourses.

“Do something different!”

He said TT’s river banks must be raised and strengthened.

“Is there any programme or plan to redirect the floods into our reservoirs? Is there any plan to create new reservoirs and catchment areas, so we would mitigate the floods we now have?

“In the height of the rainy season, we are told we are under water control, and they are putting restrictions we are all obliged to follow. So what happens in the dry season? What are the plans that we have? Any?”

He lamented recent flood damage suffered by his constituents, including a small baby whose parents could find no dry cloth on which to lay his or her head.

“That’s the reality. Schoolbooks were washed away.”

Ramadhar said 50 victims of last year’s flooding in his constituency had not yet received compensation from the government. Saying part of the Bamboo, south of Grand Bazaar, had flooded on September 20 for the first time ever, he blamed a lack of cleaning of waterways. He urged, “Let us be very proactive.”

Noting the irony of an Aranguez farmer facing penalties for extracting river water last dry season, he said the State must instead try to work with such people who were trying to earn a livelihood and to feed the nation. Regarding illicit dumping as a cause of flooding, he urged the Government to systematically provide dumpsters to communities across TT.

He hoped the authorities would curb the act of someone who was compacting the soil of a riverbank at Mohan Trace in Bamboo No2, saying villagers were very worried about it.

Ramadhar used the occasion to observe that “a once every 500 years” flood is now striking TT virtually every year. He underlined his call for proactive steps against future hazards by remarking that recent flood woes were due only to feeder bands of weather from Karen, which had not in fact directly hit TT.