The Linden Town Council, with the support of the Region 10 Regional Democratic Council (RDC) and the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA), is currently carrying out emergency works in the Central Mackenzie after torrential rainfall led to massive flooding.
At press conference on Wednesday, Linden Mayor, Sharma Solomon, said over the past five days, the town has been experiencing severe flooding and erosion right across its eight constituencies due to heavy showers. He said the floods have disrupted commercial activities in the central business district, forcing even a commercial bank to close its doors because of the flood waters.
“This severe weather has severely affected us and would have caused not only the level of flooding that we have never seen before, unprecedentedly so, that would have impacted many homes and businesses. It is for the first time we have seen businesses in the central business district of Linden closed their doors owing to the fact of flooding,” the Mayor said during a press conference on Wednesday.
The Mayor said earlier on Wednesday, he met with officials from the RDC and CDC as well as other stakeholders within the town to discuss emergency works to alleviate the flooding.
“We have identified for the short, medium and long term approach of the municipality, our immediate intervention is to look at the Republic Avenue area where we would have recognized that with lack of maintenance of the drainage system, these systems were asked to be remedied by the RDC several months ago, and the municipality, we are making that request once again for the intervention of emergency spending to clean the western and eastern sides of the drains on Republic Avenue,” Solomon said.
Mayor Solomon said it is important for all stakeholders, including Central Government, to lend support to address the poor drainage network in the town that has been starved of maintenance.
In the medium and long term, the Town Council will hire a consultant to analyze the town’s drainage network, and assess the flood pattern, before putting forward permanent solutions to the issue of flooding in the town. With those recommendations, the Council intends to work with Central Government as well as businesses and residents to add mitigation measures.
However, Solomon maintained that the floods could have been prevented, had Central Government offered critical support.
“The municipality over the past several months along with the RDC has made several recommendations with reference to the intervention of spending. The prime minister on the 30th of May, identified where central government is working with local government through the REO and the town clerk. I want to say to the town of Linden, we would like government to ensure that there is true sincere, meaningful participation of all stakeholders,” he said.
He said the neglect of the drainage networks, has now resulted in severe flooding and hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
“In the West Watooka area, you have almost $9M worth of damages to just five farm lands and we are still to ascertain from nine more persons, which we are estimating, will take us to about $20M. We have drainage issues in the Kara Kara area which takes us to about $30M per household,” he pointed out.
Solomon said many of the residents who were affected by an earlier flood back in May are still awaiting help from the Central Government. He said he will continue to make representation on their behalf.
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