Ameen blames corrupt public servants, developers for flooding woes

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen has blamed cor­rupt prac­tices by some pub­lic ser­vants, cou­pled with in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing and un­reg­u­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment, for con­tribut­ing to flood­ing in ar­eas with­in the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) on Wednes­day.

Ameen yes­ter­day ac­cused some pub­lic of­fi­cers tasked with en­forc­ing the law of tak­ing bribes and al­low­ing de­vel­op­ments that do not meet le­gal re­quire­ments to pro­ceed. Ac­cord­ing to Ameen, this has com­pound­ed prob­lems caused by blocked drains, wa­ter­ways and in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing, lead­ing to the flood­ing that af­fect­ed the com­mu­ni­ties on Wednes­day.

“It’s not just some­body toss­ing a dis­pos­able item and what we are see­ing through­out, what we al­so have com­pound­ing the is­sue is where of­fi­cers who are tasked to up­hold the law have been break­ing the law, have been com­plic­it in cor­rup­tion,” Ameen said in an in­ter­view with re­porters at the Shore of Peace in South Oropouche yes­ter­day, where she was at­tend­ing the fu­ner­al of a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) coun­cil­lor.

“We have build­ing in­spec­tors, lit­ter pre­ven­tion war­dens, we have peo­ple with­in the cor­po­ra­tion, in pub­lic health, who are part of the prob­lem and over the years, there are nu­mer­ous pub­lic ser­vants who, while no case has been pur­sued against them, peo­ple know them to be in­volved in cor­rup­tion be­cause they take bribes and they al­low build­ings that do not meet the re­quire­ments to get ap­provals. They al­low pub­lic health, a lot of pub­lic health things to go on. They are in ca­hoots with con­trac­tors. They are in ca­hoots with de­vel­op­ers and that is part of our prob­lem in lo­cal gov­ern­ment, it is a fact.”

While the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to clamp down on such prac­tices, she ad­mit­ted, “It will not be easy be­cause it did not get like this overnight. What I have im­plored all chair­men, UNC and PNM, is to stick to what you know is right, work with the com­mu­ni­ty and let us en­sure that at least good sense pre­vails.”

Ameen not­ed that re­ports would have been made when many of the drains were be­ing blocked, but no ac­tion was tak­en.

She said some mat­ters are al­ready un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and the po­lice and Fraud Squad will be called in where there is ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing.

The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, said sev­er­al ar­eas that usu­al­ly flood did not ex­pe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing this week be­cause wa­ter­cours­es had been cleared ahead of the rain­fall.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that a lot more work has to be done, Ameen as­sured that the Gov­ern­ment is bet­ter pre­pared to re­spond to flood­ing this rainy sea­son, with all 14 cor­po­ra­tions equipped with pow­er sources, pumps, gen­er­a­tors, cots and blan­kets.

Ameen al­so ac­cused some PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions of play­ing pol­i­tics and pre­vent­ing work from tak­ing place. “I want to say to those chair­men and may­ors of PNM cor­po­ra­tions, rub­bish does not know pol­i­tics, flood does not know pol­i­tics.”

Mean­while, CT­TRC chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad said coun­cil­lors and the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment crew were on the ground fol­low­ing flood­ing in the Cal­cut­ta, Clax­ton Bay and Gas­par­il­lo com­mu­ni­ties caused by heavy rain­fall on Wednes­day. He said as­sess­ments were con­duct­ed and two ar­eas were iden­ti­fied where un­reg­u­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment was tak­ing place, with peo­ple back­fill­ing land with­out the nec­es­sary per­mis­sions and guid­ance, re­sult­ing in the block­age of some wa­ter­ways.

Ram­per­sad said equip­ment was de­ployed to ar­eas where pos­si­ble, while fol­low-up ac­tion will be tak­en with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to reg­u­late the de­vel­op­ment works. He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 26 res­i­den­tial homes were af­fect­ed by the flood­ing.