A FLOOD OF BLAME

Whether it is the Prime Minister, Patrick Manning or Science, Technology and Tertiary Education Minister, Colm Imbert laying blame for the floods which have adversely affected several areas of the country within recent weeks, the two major culprits identified by them have invariably been indiscriminate developers and the squatters. The third group has been everybody’s bete noire — persons who repeatedly dump from old mattresses and garbage to quarried material into watercourses. And while there may be a great deal of truth to the charges made by Prime Minister Manning and Minister Imbert and those who pinpointed misuse of watercourses, the question arises: What has Government done about them? Or, additionally, what does it propose to do and when?

Manning, as the head of Government, has the authority not merely to raise at Cabinet level why the Town and Country Planning Department, the Forestry Department and the Police Service have not sought to have the law enforced, but to instruct relevant ministers to act and with dispatch. He is not like ordinary citizens who, having voted in a General Election or Local Government Elections are expected, save for the occasional Letter to the Editor, to be voiceless and faceless until the next election comes along. He has the moral and the legal authority to act and to see that effective remedial measures are put in train. He can question why rich land developers putting up high-priced housing on hillsides, and poor squatters with their slash and burn tactics in the hills have been allowed to trigger flooding in low lying areas and the inconvenience and varied health problems that come with it.

Protests at flooding mounted again this week following on Monday’s and Tuesday’s heavy showers which saw 83.5 mm of rain recorded at Piarco, as a result of what the Meteorological Office described as being caused by an active Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. Today, Government, all in an effort to placate those who have been and are still being inconvenienced by all too frequent flood waters, is promising that something will be done, that watercourses will be cleared, action taken to stop illegal cutting of hillsides and indiscriminate land development. But Trinidadians and Tobagonians have heard that song before over the years. The singers may be different but the song remains the same. By next year’s dry season it will all be conveniently forgotten by Government, save for well publicised cleaning of some of the high profile watercourses.

The hillside developers and the slash and burn squatters will continue as before. Perhaps action of sorts, largely cosmetic, will be taken by the Government either in time for the next Local Government Elections or the next General Election constitutionally due in 2007. With the onset of next year’s rainy season the flooding will resume and so will the blame and the promises all on cue. Faeces from cesspits in low lying areas of Central Trinidad will flow into yards with next year’s floods, as they have done this year and for decades, and the health of residents in these areas will be at risk. And if history “repeats itself,” livestock will be lost and agricultural crops contaminated. Homes and business places will be flooded out; traffic will be severely affected and productivity at the work place and in the classroom will stumble. The Government will blame “indiscriminate land development and hillside squatting” for the flooding, not the Administration’s indifference, and promise, faithfully, that something will be done come 2006!