00:00Days of persistent rainfall and minor to no flooding across frequently affected areas in Pinal, Debe, Barakpur and Woodland.
00:10Chairman of the Pinal Debe Regional Corporation, Gauta Maharaj, believes it's all due to the work put in by local government minister Khadija Amin
00:18and the directive of the prime minister, Kamla Passant-Bissessa.
00:22The proof is in the pudding. We did a significant amount of cleaning through the flood mitigation effort launched by the minister of local government
00:31and guided by the Honorable Prime Minister and definitely the fruits are there.
00:35We have been asking for the large excavator for quite a while. Now it's a reality.
00:40We have the large excavator of the ministry of local government. It is doing significant work.
00:45Chairman Maharaj says collaboration was key to getting the work done.
00:49Where the ministry of works and the ministry of agriculture is engaged with us.
00:54So when we complete up to our outfall, that is the regional corporation's outfall, which is the drains,
01:00they get into a river and then into a larger river. And that is exactly where the sticking point was.
01:06If we clean our drains, then it still goes into a plugged area.
01:10And now with the collaborative effort, it means that we are cleaning comprehensively end to end.
01:14So that line of sight approach is definitely bringing results.
01:17He says while extensive water course cleaning accounted for minimal flood impact this time around,
01:24they will be working on measures to fix larger underlying issues to mitigate flooding in the long term.
01:31The plan will be to continue the drain cleaning.
01:34We are aware that the river channel and drain cleaning alone will not do it.
01:37Of course, we'll be working with the various ministries to have the deeper engineering type input
01:42in areas such as the floodgate management, the strange phenomenon of the elevated riverbed in the woodland area,
01:50the river embankment strengthening.
01:52Woodland is an area that usually gets flooded last when water from other areas makes it way further downstream.
02:00When we visited on Friday, woodland residents weren't convinced the ministry's work would be enough to spare them.
02:08I'm not surprised right now, but we are expecting it.
02:10Most of us are on full-on panic mode because the rains has not let up for the past couple of days.
02:17So this usually means that we will be getting the flood.
02:21It's not an if, not a but. It's going to happen.
02:24The preparations we are making is to just raise our belongings higher in the house.
02:29People are going to the highway, getting blocks.
02:31I myself went and got some concrete blocks this morning and just tried to lift everything out of the reach of the water.
02:36But we don't know how high the water is going to come.
02:38Speaking to TV6 News, President of the South Oropoot Riverine Flood Action Group, Edward Moody,
02:45says the area needs more than the temporary fixes being carried out by the ministry.
02:51The issue is how do we get the water from the river, the main water courses, into the Gulf of Paria.
02:57If we should solve that problem, everything else would fall in place.
03:02Yes, it has shown a positive impact in terms of the water flow out of some of these communities.
03:07However, I will go back to the real issue.
03:10It has to do with the main water courses and work has not started with the Ministry of Works as yet to deal with these main water courses.
03:18You could clean how many small water courses you want.
03:21This is the real challenge.
03:23Cindy Raguba, Tika Singh, TV6 News.
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