God’s wicked acts?

And this is not the only false mantra he annunciates: he also absolves the PNM from blame for the damage caused by the floods and landslips. He does not reassign the blame he so hurriedly dismisses, but assures us that the catastrophe was “An Act of God”.

Poor God. Why would He have done this to lovely Matelot, Grande Riviere and Brasso Seco? And these communities, what might they have done to anger God so? That He sent rain—again? After He had promised, post Noah, no more floods, He would send the fire next time? And what an utter waste of time and intellect to suggest that obeah was responsible for all the damage the rain had done? Like “God send (sic) this” for some reason and there is nothing we can do? Rain falls! Get used to it. Manage your lands and your watercourses. Our roads, rivers, bridges and lands are not “managed” at all in terms of rain event mitigation. And that is not God’s fault.

Listen, notwithstanding some laws or regulations filed away somewhere years ago now, there is zero management of our lands and infrastructure. There is no enforcement of any law or regulation, and once a perpetrator — “developer”, slash and burn farmer or squatter— moves in and creates problems, that person can never be removed or made to alter his destruction to meet some safety or sustainability standard.

And it is the enduring failure of successive governments, but dominated by the PNM, to enforce, regularize and save our lands and infrastructure, that has Matelot, Grande Riviere and Brasso Seco on their knees today. And even if some State agency steps up to try to ensure that hills are not denuded and bulldozed, or rivers illegally diverted, “all it takes is a call to the Minister”, and the State agency is bypassed. And that is a direct quote by a senior person in Ministry of Planning a few years ago, at a meeting at the Asa Wright Nature Centre discussing quarrying in the Arima Valley. Are you aware that there is factually nothing that any arm of the government can do to stop illegal quarrying on State lands? Or to prevent deforestation for “gardening” on State lands? Or to prevent people damming watercourses or changing courses of rivers? Or to stop people building shops on the designated “Right of Way Reserve” along our highways? Even if you are the owner of hillside land through which a government road passes, you cannot cut all the trees on your land and cause the road to slip away. That is the law. But the fact is, as anyone who drives along the Arima Blanchisseuse Road knows, “irregardless” of the law, you can cut all the trees and when the road slips away, government spends millions building retaining walls in vain.

And this, Mr Minister, is the fault of the PNM. All the major slips along the Northern Range roads have occurred where people have removed the forest cover. All those landslides, all the inconveniences, all the loss of electricity happened because the political end of the Ministry of Works refuses to acknowledge what is causing the landslips.

But your engineers know, Mr Minister.

They know what is causing the problem, and they know how to build the retaining walls. But better yet, they know what to do to prevent these catastrophes.

But the failure is not with the engineers. The failure lies with the politicians, who will not enforce the laws which everyone knows need to be enforced if we are to hold our infrastructure together. So it is the fault of the PNM, Mr Minister.

The last government at least announced that they intended to buy out the christophene acreage on the Blanchisseuse Road, so that the hillside could be reforested and stabilized.

But due to the slow pace of bureaucracy in this land (another curse for which the PNM must bear major responsibility) that purchase would take at least ten years.

And it is not just landslips which wrought havoc among the communities.

Roads and bridges were washed away in flash floods. Flooding aggravated by the fact that no watercourses are ever cleaned has swept away perpetually incomplete bridges.

Maintain our land and infrastructure, Mr Minister. Educate yourself and your colleagues in Cabinet. Educate your population, let them learn and understand why rain wrought such havoc. Do not assuage the people with obeah talk that this was God’s fault.

This was an Act of Wilful Ignorance on the part of governments who will never solve the problem if they refuse to u n d e r - stand why landslips o c c u r .

Ac c e p t the responsibility! Fix the problem!