Tancoo calls on Ministers to stop playing hide and seek with affected residents

The residents from Penal to Woodland are fed-up with Ministers using their suffering for photo-ops. According to MP for Oropouche West, Davendranath Tancoo, “once more, while homeowners were at work, two Government Ministers clandestinely paid a fleeting visit to Tulsa Trace for a photo opportunity.”

MP Tancoo said that “The Ministers came with their entourage, posed and they left quickly before the MP and residents could get the opportunity to question them. There is no one squatting on the river banks in Tulsa Trace but that was the Minister’s explanation for the fact that the area flooded. He closed his eyes to the absence of banks, the blockages inside the river and the cosmetic work done in cleaning the river and the comprehensive failure after 7 years of the Government to provide anything other than talk and more talk to deal with the crisis of flooding. ”

“No timeframe was given for any exercise that would alleviate the flooding problem; or for the starting-up of the pump in Tulsa Trace, or the clearing of the rivers of trees and debris, or the removal of the old flood gates that now impede the water flow in the area, or the building up of the river banks, or compensation for loss due to flooding or hope of any kind of relief for affected residents. Nothing!”

Ironically Tancoo noted that once more, the Ministers choose to disregard the Woodland area where over a year ago, Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan promised to have a pump installed to deal with flooding. Sinanan had said then, that the pump was already in the country. And yet the Woodland area, and several surrounding areas were again flooded at the time but the Minister chose not to go there to pose.

MP Tancoo had this message for both Ministers as “Citizens are fed-up of these charades and broken promises. They are fed-up of the geographic discrimination. When homes in Greenvale flooded the government moved quickly to fix the infrastructure to ensure no flooding recurs. But the Tennant Channel, Teemul River and others remain in desperate need of cleaning and dredging. Ministers Al Rawi and Sinanan need to stop playing hide and seek with residents who pay their salaries and for the heavily tinted vehicles they use to hide in to avoid them.”

There should be no property tax levied on these homeowners until the Ministers stop their games and PR stunts and get serious about dealing with flooding and damaged road network currently suffered by residents, because of geographic discrimination.