Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is call­ing for le­gal ac­tion against un­scrupu­lous peo­ple, in­clud­ing res­i­dents, whose un­law­ful ac­tions con­tribute to flood­ing.

With many com­mu­ni­ties still flood­ed af­ter heavy rain­fall, she stat­ed that Gov­ern­ment–both cen­tral and lo­cal–must take most of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, though a mi­nor­i­ty of res­i­dents and or­gan­i­sa­tions share some blame.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the MP for Siparia, was speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at her con­stituen­cy of­fice in Pe­nal yes­ter­day where she al­so called on the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to de­clare the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion a high-pri­or­i­ty re­lief area.

“So whilst it is very easy to blame the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and or the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, both must share in the blame, but al­so res­i­dents must share in the blame, those who en­gage in il­le­gal di­ver­sion of wa­ter cours­es, il­le­gal back­fill­ing of lands, il­le­gal de­vel­op­ment by some per­sons and some en­ti­ties. So every­one has some blame in this blame game that we want to go down.”

Ques­tion­ing why the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in the area must be flood­ed out be­cause of the un­law­ful ac­tions of a few un­scrupu­lous peo­ple, she called for firm and ur­gent ac­tion.

“This is not just il­le­gal, break­ing the law, but un­fair, de­struc­tive and dan­ger­ous for the ma­jor­i­ty of res­i­dents.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, with the full back­ing of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry, to im­me­di­ate­ly is­sue stop-work no­tices on il­le­gal de­vel­op­ments, ramp up garbage col­lec­tion, iden­ti­fy all en­croach­ments and re­align­ments of wa­ter­cours­es and start le­gal ac­tion against all of­fend­ers. Per­sad-Biss­esar al­so called on the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry to fund the lit­i­ga­tion ac­tion.

As wide­spread flood­ing wreaked hav­oc in south Trinidad af­fect­ing tens of thou­sands of res­i­dents, she said clean-up op­er­a­tions were al­so af­fect­ed due to the Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant shut­down. Not­ing that wa­ter truck­ing ser­vices at the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion were in­ad­e­quate to fa­cil­i­tate re­quests from res­i­dents, she al­so called for a co­or­di­nat­ed ef­fort from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties to get truck-borne wa­ter to com­mu­ni­ties in south Trinidad and es­tab­lish com­mu­ni­ty wa­ter tanks to as­sist in the clean-up ef­forts.

The Siparia MP al­so ex­pressed con­cern about san­i­ta­tion and health is­sues, in­clud­ing wa­ter­borne dis­eases and dengue. She al­so called on the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to ur­gent­ly de­clare the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion a high-pri­or­i­ty re­lief area. The Op­po­si­tion Leader said this would al­low var­i­ous gov­ern­ment min­istries to ur­gent­ly al­lo­cate the nec­es­sary re­sources to pro­tect res­i­dents and re­store dis­rupt­ed ser­vices.

Per­sad-Biss­esar added that the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry must ur­gent­ly as­sist with ad­di­tion­al re­sources such as equip­ment and labour from oth­er re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) to en­hance flood re­lief ef­forts. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so called on the min­istries of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fi­nance to be­gin im­me­di­ate as­sess­ments of af­fect­ed res­i­dents and al­lo­cate fund­ing for dis­as­ter re­lief grants and com­pen­sa­tion to those af­fect­ed.

Rais­ing an­oth­er is­sue, she said, a re­cent memo, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 2, to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions de­tail­ing a sig­nif­i­cant bud­get re­al­lo­ca­tion has im­pact­ed Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s (PDRC) abil­i­ty to re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly to dis­as­ters. She said funds to­talling over $43 mil­lion ini­tial­ly al­lo­cat­ed for es­sen­tial ser­vices in the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions were di­vert­ed to CEPEP and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, she claimed the UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions got the greater cut in com­par­i­son to the oth­ers. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said the PDRC’s chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj had re­quest­ed $32 mil­lion in its De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme Draft Es­ti­mate to ad­dress 130 drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion projects for the 2025 fis­cal year, but the Min­istry of Fi­nance al­lo­cat­ed a mea­gre $5 mil­lion which means the cor­po­ra­tion can ex­e­cute 20 projects at best. 

Al-Rawi de­fends Govt’s re­sponse

Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Faris Al-Rawi says his team arranged emer­gency trans­port for chil­dren and vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als, co­or­di­nat­ed emer­gency re­lease op­er­a­tions, and fa­cil­i­tat­ed vi­tal sup­plies to for­ti­fy fam­i­lies against the ef­fects of the ris­ing flood­wa­ters.

The min­is­ter al­so de­nied al­le­ga­tions by the Op­po­si­tion Leader that “nei­ther I nor my of­fice has re­ceived any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from her or her rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­gard­ing as­sis­tance for the af­fect­ed ar­eas. Up­on reach­ing out proac­tive­ly to en­gage her of­fice, I re­ceived no re­sponse.

“I do, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edge the com­mend­able ef­fort made by MP for Oropouche East Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who has ac­tive­ly en­gaged with our team, pro­vid­ing pre­cise lo­ca­tion da­ta to aid our re­lief ef­forts. The min­istry has re­spond­ed to each of his re­quests with im­me­di­ate ac­tion.” 

He al­so re­spond­ed to claims by Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj who he said as­sert­ed that over 10,000 cit­i­zens have been af­fect­ed by this flood­ing event. 

“This fig­ure is base­less and has no foun­da­tion in the facts at hand. We cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly warn against such ex­ag­ger­at­ed state­ments, which serve on­ly to sow un­due fear and ap­pre­hen­sion in the minds of our cit­i­zens,” Al Rawi in­di­cat­ed. He stat­ed that the min­istry was in the process of fi­nal­is­ing “an ac­cu­rate, da­ta-dri­ven as­sess­ment of the im­pact­ed pop­u­la­tion.” –With re­port­ing by Bavi­ta Gopaulchan