Unhappy villagers stand outside a faulty water pumping unit that failed to remove heavy floods after it arrived on Thursday night.

A faulty wa­ter pump failed to bring any re­lief for flood vic­tims at Ca­roni Vil­lage on Thurs­day night.

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly spent the night in the com­mu­ni­ty and spoke with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day morn­ing around 6 am.

Ram­bal­ly said the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion brought in three small pumps that were not mak­ing any im­pact.

He said the Min­istry of Works sent in a mas­sive 12-inch diesel pump on the back of a truck and trail­er but that the pump start­ed and failed af­ter two to five min­utes of op­er­a­tion and did not pump any wa­ter out. Ram­bal­ly said up to 7 am the vil­lagers were ea­ger­ly wait­ing on a tech­ni­cian to ser­vice the pump.

Ram­bal­ly said parts of the Ca­roni Vil­lage flood­ed when the riv­er burst its banks at sev­er­al points.

He said this in­clud­ed Per­sad Street, Gand­hi Street and en­vi­rons.

Ram­bal­ly said when works were done to the riv­er bank to the north of the vil­lage the old riv­er em­bank­ment was not im­proved. He said wa­ter crossed the new em­bank­ment and the old em­bank­ment and in­to the com­mu­ni­ty.

Ram­bal­ly added that the sluice gate out­side of the riv­er em­bank­ment is non­func­tion­al and al­lows wa­ter to flow in faster than it can ex­it.

How­ev­er, Ram­bal­ly said he has spo­ken with Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al Rawi, who has been at­ten­tive to his calls.

Ram­bal­ly said, “There have been over 100 homes that have been over­run with flood wa­ter and there is two feet of wa­ter in some homes.”

Chaguanas West MP Dinesh Rambally, centre, speaks with villagers Keshu Ganpath, left, and Rudranath Indarsingh as they wade through flood waters at Persad Street, Caroni.

Ram­bal­ly said the res­i­dents demon­strat­ed ear­li­er this year to get works done on the river­bank be­cause not enough was done dur­ing the dry sea­son to pre­pare for the im­pact of rains in the wet sea­son. He said some works were done on the bank in a “piece­meal” fash­ion while the sluice gate was not at­tend­ed to.

He said the works un­der­tak­en at the river­bank in La Paille has man­aged to hold out un­der the pres­sure.

Op­po­si­tion MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh, a res­i­dent of Gand­hi Street, said he had to re­lo­cate his el­der­ly sick moth­er whose home was flood­ed out. In­dars­ingh, who is al­so the MP for Cou­va South, said he has been plead­ing with the au­thor­i­ties to widen some of the nar­row drains and cylin­der cross­ing.

In­dars­ingh said “The is­sues can be dealt with in the re­duc­tion in flood­ing. The Min­is­ter of Works and the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment needs to work with the MP in a more fo­cused man­ner to deal with the em­bank­ment, sluice gate and the widen­ing of the cylin­der cross­ing.” In­dars­ingh con­tin­ued, “The Min­istry of Works has been al­lo­cat­ed $22 bil­lion in the last 7 sev­en years, where mon­ey is gone.” Vil­lager Teshu Gan­path said garbage left be­hind by road clean-up crews and oth­er en­ti­ties some­times end up in the wa­ter cours­es if it is not re­moved in a time­ly man­ner.”

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