more flooding issues

130 homes hit hard by floods in Fyzabad

Some 130 res­i­dents of Fyz­abad were af­fect­ed af­ter flood wa­ters gushed in­to their prop­er­ties and homes yes­ter­day.
Fed up of this sit­u­a­tion, res­i­dents and Fyz­abad MP Lack­ram Bo­doe called on the au­thor­i­ties to fix the four of sev­en sluice gates which have been non-func­tion­al for sev­er­al years.
The ar­eas af­fect­ed were St John Trace, Av­o­cat, Ack­bar Trace and Chat­ter Av­enue.
Res­i­dent Rod­ney Ramjit, who owns a fur­ni­ture fac­to­ry at St John’s Trace, es­ti­mat­ed his loss­es to be more than $75,000.
He said, “The flood come up so fast I did not get time to move out every­thing. We save some things, but I lost a lot of fab­ric, foam and ma­te­ri­als.”
He said it be­gan rain­ing heav­i­ly on yes­ter­day morn­ing and by 4 pm the riv­er had burst its banks and the flood wa­ters start­ed to rise. He called on the Gov­ern­ment to dredge the riv­er and fix the flood­gates.
“The main prob­lem is that sev­en years now this riv­er not clean and then four flood­gates not work­ing. And that is the main prob­lem caus­ing this flood,” Ramjit said.
“We con­stant­ly com­plain­ing about it to the Min­istry of Works but they do­ing ab­solute­ly noth­ing. The min­is­ter came and looked at it at the be­gin­ning of the year, but noth­ing was done. I fed up of this thing. I have a busi­ness and I los­ing a lot of mon­ey.”
When the T&T Guardian called him lat­er on in the day, he said the flood wa­ters had risen again.
“Look the wa­ter com­ing up again. I have to call for help,” Ramjit said.
Bo­doe and his staff were yes­ter­day out in the floods ren­der­ing as­sis­tance to the res­i­dents and dis­trib­ut­ing wa­ter and food sup­plies. He ex­pressed con­cern about “gov­ern­ment’s re­luc­tance” to re­pair the sluice gates at St John Trace.
“As a re­sult of this the flood wa­ter, flow to the Godineau Riv­er and Gulf of Paria has been de­layed. I call on the Min­is­ter of Works again to ef­fect re­pairs to those sluice gates.”
Bo­doe al­so com­plained that he had re­ceived no help from the gov­ern­ment agen­cies.
“So far, it’s just my staff and some mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who have been ren­der­ing help. The res­i­dents are in­di­cat­ing that the wa­ter is still ris­ing and they are a lit­tle bit fear­ful about what will hap­pen,” Bo­doe said, adding he and his staff will be out in the field to­day again ren­der­ing aid.
The Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary School was closed yes­ter­day.
The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so said the North Oropouche Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, North Oropouche RC and Debe Hin­du SDMS Pri­ma­ry School were closed as a re­sult of the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing weath­er.
“There were al­so ear­ly dis­missals for sev­er­al oth­er pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools and Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE) Cen­tres be­cause stu­dents and teach­ers were not able to ac­cess the school com­pound due to flood­ing in the com­mu­ni­ties,” the min­istry added.
The Pe­nal Quinam Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School was opened as an emer­gency shel­ter for res­i­dents of Pe­nal/Debe and Bar­rack­pore who were hard hit by the floods.
​Source:  Guardian