RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

An­gry res­i­dents of Pe­nal protest­ed on Fri­day, ac­cus­ing a pen­sion­er of self­ish­ly di­vert­ing a ma­jor riv­er and putting their homes at risk of flood­ing.

The demon­stra­tors con­front­ed Ajod­ha Pooran, who ad­mit­ted spend­ing $150,000 to al­ter the course of the Black Wa­ter Chan­nel, a trib­u­tary of the South Oropouche Riv­er, to stop ero­sion near his prop­er­ty. How­ev­er, res­i­dents ar­gued that his ac­tions could wors­en flood­ing in the sur­round­ing ar­eas.

Res­i­dent Michelle Ramdeo said the Batchya re­gion al­ready ex­pe­ri­ences se­vere flood­ing, and the riv­er di­ver­sion could bring even more dev­as­ta­tion.

“We are watch­ing the skies, and we are very anx­ious and wor­ried. We have ex­pe­ri­enced floods in this area, and now that the riv­er has been di­vert­ed, we ex­pect even more floods,” Ramdeo said.

Farmer Dhani­ram Latch­man al­so ex­pressed con­cern for his live­stock.

“I al­ready lost a few an­i­mals in floods in the past, and now that they have done this to the riv­er, we are all wor­ried,” he said. He called on the rel­e­vant agen­cies to in­ves­ti­gate and re­store the wa­ter­course to its orig­i­nal de­sign.

Dur­ing the protest, res­i­dents met with Oropouche West MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Pe­nal-Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj, de­mand­ing ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion.

Both Tan­coo and Ma­haraj in­formed Pooran that di­vert­ing the riv­er was il­le­gal.

Tan­coo said un­reg­u­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment has sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributed to flood­ing is­sues in the area.

“When peo­ple take mat­ters in­to their own hands with­out prop­er en­gi­neer­ing over­sight, the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty suf­fers,” he said.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Pooran ad­mit­ted that he did not seek or ob­tain writ­ten ap­proval from the Min­istry of Works be­fore di­vert­ing the trib­u­tary, which serves as a main out­flow from the South Oropouche drainage basin. He al­so ac­knowl­edged that no en­gi­neer was present on-site to di­rect the work. Pooran de­nied the di­ver­sion would cause flood­ing.

“I am clean­ing the riv­er and di­vert­ing it so it will flow bet­ter. This will not af­fect any­body,” he added.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group, Ed­ward Mood­ie, said the gov­ern­ment must pur­chase all lands near rivers to al­low easy ac­cess for Min­istry equip­ment to clear wa­ter­cours­es. He added that Pooran’s ef­forts to safe­guard his prop­er­ty should have been prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed by en­gi­neers at the Works Min­istry.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan said he did not have de­tails of the riv­er di­ver­sion and was await­ing a re­port from the Drainage Di­vi­sion.

He said his min­istry would as­sess the sit­u­a­tion be­fore tak­ing ac­tion.

“We are await­ing a re­port on the mat­ter. Once we re­ceive it, we will de­ter­mine the next steps,” Sinanan said.