AN ABSURD SITUATION

Government’s diverting of funds, traditionally allocated to Local Government for the clearing of water courses, to CEPEP and the relative indifference of Town and Country Planning to carefully monitor large scale housing developments and squatting on hillsides and alongside rivers and drains have been largely responsible for the severe flooding and landslides during the current rainy season. That Government should have placed the largely cosmetic Community Environment Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP), whose outstanding achievements to date have been painting boulders white and employing 40 persons to do the work of five, ahead of the clearing and maintaining of water courses and the repairing of sluice-gates to prevent or minimise flooding, is monstrously absurd. Yet Government, rather than seek to deal realistically through Local Government bodies with the annual problem of flooding, and with it the inconvenience and cost to the country of scores of acres including estates and orchards being under water, employs some 6,000 persons in glorified URP projects.

The current disasters that are occuring all over Trinidad and Tobago in this the wettest month of the year, provide the Opposition UNC with an ideal opportunity for action. They must request the Speaker of the House of Representatives to allow them to raise the issue of flooding in the country as a matter of grave national concern. Already several lives, crops and livestock have been lost, homes undermined, damaged or destroyed by landslides, swept away or inundated by flood waters and appliances damaged beyond repair.  The roads are like rivers causing severe transport difficulties. Why are we allowing the Government to get away with this? Water courses which have not been cleared, widened or deepened for several years and into which quarried material, mattresses, old cars, appliances, furniture and garbage have been dumped, add up to a serious national problem. This problem has been further aggravated by large housing developers and individuals constructing dwelling units alongside water courses, filling in rivers and streams in an effort to illegally and dangerously extend their boundaries.

Sometimes this is done by squatters at their own down-the-road risk, and by large scale housing developers at the risk of others. On Sunday, following flooding in Maraval, Minister of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education, Mr Colm Imbert, who represents the area in the House of Representatives, explained how narrowing of the Dibe river by developers had led to flooding in Maraval over several decades. Imbert told Newsday  that the Dibe river had been narrowed by development over the years from a width of more than 20 feet to as little as five feet in some places. What had happened with development, Imbert stressed, was that as the river went along, it became narrower to as little as five feet and very shallow in some places. “This coupled with a number of pipes and other debris from the large housing developments in Maraval is responsible for the flooding.” Are there no authorities to put a stop to this rape of the land and the consequent suffering of the people?

But Imbert’s statement provokes the question: Had he, as a Government Minister between 1991 and 1995, and 2001 to now, and as a member of the House of Representatives from 1991 to the present time, intervened and sought to have an end to this cynical and dangerous flouting of the law? Has his Government done anything but talk about vision 20/20 which at the rate we are going we will never see? And what about the Town and Country Planning Department and other relevant agencies? Where have they been all this time? Have they been asleep all these years? Or is there another more uncomfortable explanation? As a people we must demand action. We can’t stop nature. We can’t stop the rain. But we can — indeed must — stop the Government that seems totally indifferent to ensuring that when it rains there is somewhere for the water to run off. We must and we can save our land from the present disaster.