Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is MP, says land de­vel­op­ers whose projects re­sult in de­struc­tion of nat­ur­al habi­tats and wors­en­ing of the flood­ing sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, could face the long arm of the law.

The Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP made the as­ser­tion in an of­fi­cial state­ment re­leased to­day, con­cern­ing the re­cent flood­ing in her con­stituen­cy.

“As Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion un­der my re­mit, are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a num­ber of land de­vel­op­ments be­ing un­der­tak­en in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try, to guar­an­tee that the re­spon­si­ble de­vel­op­ers have the oblig­a­tory ap­provals and are meet­ing the nec­es­sary le­gal re­quire­ments,” the Plan­ning Min­is­ter stat­ed. 

“If it is dis­cov­ered that none of the above have been met, then all ac­tions avail­able to the Min­istry un­der the law will be im­ple­ment­ed to ei­ther stop the de­vel­op­ments, or to en­sure that the prop­er mea­sures are be­ing un­der­tak­en to safe­guard the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she added.

The Min­is­ter is­sued the state­ment to­day in re­sponse to an Opin­ion pub­lished by the T&T Guardian on Sep­tem­ber 23, ti­tled: “WASA, floods and de­vel­op­ment” [https://www.guardian.co.tt/opin­ion/wasa-floods-and-de­vel­op­ment-6.2.1216819.1989d21709].

The Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP re­port­ed that she cur­rent­ly is “work­ing with the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC), the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and the Self Help Com­mis­sion with a short term and long term plan aimed at solv­ing the cit­i­zens’ flood­ing woes”.

“Some of the pos­si­ble so­lu­tions be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed as part of a ma­jor flood mit­i­ga­tion plan for the con­stituen­cy in­clude widen­ing drains and wa­ter cours­es in the con­stituen­cy, the de­vel­op­ment of a flood re­ten­tion plan, rais­ing the phys­i­cal lev­el of some parts of the road net­work in the Arou­ca/Mal­oney area is al­so be­ing looked in­to as pre­ven­ta­tive ac­tion,” the Min­is­ter said.

The re­lease goes on to ex­plain that in di­rect re­sponse to the flood­ing over this past week­end, care pack­ages of food and oth­er es­sen­tial items were pro­vid­ed for those af­fect­ed by the flood­ing. In ad­di­tion, per­son­nel from the Con­stituen­cy Of­fi­cer are as­sist­ing af­fect­ed per­sons with the ap­pli­ca­tion for flood grants.

The Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP al­so re­count­ed that she had mo­bi­lized a team—in­clud­ing TPRC Chair­man Kwe­si Robin­son along with their en­gi­neer­ing team, Self Help Com­mis­sion Chair El­roy Ju­lian, MP for Lopinot Bon Air West Mar­vin Gon­za­les and an en­gi­neer­ing team from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port—to dredge and clear some of the clogged wa­ter cours­es to ap­ply im­me­di­ate re­lief. 

“Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter the Hon. Ro­han Sinanan al­so vis­it­ed the site and a long term plan is be­ing de­vel­oped with all the en­ti­ties afore­men­tioned,” Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is stat­ed. 

The Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter ob­served that cli­mate change and the as­so­ci­at­ed ex­treme weath­er events and in­creased pre­cip­i­ta­tion al­so are hav­ing an im­pact on flood­ing in this coun­try.

“This is in ad­di­tion to de­struc­tion of our ter­res­tri­al ecosys­tems through de­for­esta­tion and il­le­gal log­ging, for­est fires, and in­dis­crim­i­nate quar­ry­ing”, she said, “which are threat­en­ing our bio­di­ver­si­ty in par­tic­u­lar habi­tats and species, and can al­so con­tribute to in­creased flood­ing dur­ing pe­ri­ods of high rain­fall.”

Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is is urg­ing cit­i­zens to “en­sure that they are en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble in their dai­ly lives”, even as the Min­istry con­tin­ues to ful­fil its man­dates of en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment, pro­tec­tion and con­ser­va­tion.

“Pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment must be the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of every mem­ber of our na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion,” she said.