Minister of Rural Development and Local Government, Khadijah Ameen says while significant investments have been made to improve flood preparedness, individual and community readiness remain essential, as the country enters the peak of the rainy season.
“We like to say God is a Trini, but we have to be prepared. We have to remember 2018, we have to remember 2022, remember those major floods and how devastated we were.”
Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Khadijah Ameen says one of the biggest challenges during emergencies, specifically flooding, is convincing residents to evacuate despite shelters being available and fully equipped to accommodate them.
“We don’t have a culture of evacuating. I have flood-prone communities, and they prefer to stay in their home, even if their home is surrounded by water, bring them food and basic supplies, so that they will survive until the water goes down, even though we have an active shelter. So our shelter is usually a coordinating point for sending relief supplies in. We send medication, food, drinking water, mattresses sometimes, but many of them prefer not to leave their home.”
She says flood mitigation efforts have been intensified ahead of the peak of the rainy season, with coordinated drainage works aimed at improving water flow and reducing flood risks in vulnerable communities.
“So we have manual labour, in addition to the work that has been done by the excavators and so on that you see out there. The Ministry of Works is cleaning a lot of those major water courses. And what Ms. Jearlean John has been doing in terms of restoring riverbanks, putting in those floodgates and so on, it means that the local drains that flow into those major water courses have to be clear so that water will get from the flood-affected area out.”
Minister Ameen notes that the Government is also strengthening its early warning capabilities in collaboration with WASA.
“WASA has now installed equipment to monitor water levels on the tributaries. So these tributaries, before the water reaches the Caroni River, we know whether these tributaries are high, and it means that in X number of hours the Caroni River will be high, and we prepare way before. So it gives us much more advanced warning.”
Shelters across the country have been upgraded and hundreds of emergency responders trained to strengthen the country’s response capacity.
“We have done inspections and we are still doing inspections to ensure all our shelters are up to mark. We have changed some of the shelters because they were not suitable. And we are working closely with the ODPM on this. So we have personnel, we have equipment, we have shelters, our disaster management training. We have graduated more than 300 certified emergency response team members in the entire country.”
Minister Ameen is calling on local government councillors to work alongside disaster response teams to keep waterways clear and help minimise flooding in their communities.