Albouystown residents were irate yesterday as water continued to rise in their homes as the city remained covered under several inches of floodwaters.
Streets in Albouystown were covered in almost three feet of water, forcing residents to wade through floating garbage and faeces. “It is trench water. It is sewage water. It is dead water and rain water…its four different types of water mix up here and it’s only because poor people strong we ain’t sick yet. God watching us because we suppose to get nuff diseases from this water,” Gillian John said.
The Curtis Street, Albouystown resident said the waters flooded his house on Thursday morning and most of his furniture and electrical appliances were destroyed. He also stated that all of the chickens he was rearing were killed in the flood.
He stated that the government was “fooling” people with its $500M city clean-up campaign and that drains and streets were being cleaned but not the main canals. Albouystown had been one of the areas that the campaign had been presenting as a success story since its start in August.
“They pretending that they are doing something but we know that they are doing nothing here,” he said, while calling for the ministry to clean the main canal.
A grocery store owner, Shaun Mohamed, said he woke up on Thursday morning and found his shop flooded and most of his goods destroyed along with a transformer and a stabiliser machine.
“This is no big sort of rain. It is a one night rain. I can’t believe we lost so much,” he said, before adding that the clean-up campaign was a “fraud.”
Orel Richardson, a wood work shop owner, said he had lost a lot of money to the flood. He said most of his lumber had split in halves after the water hit them. “Wood is money and the plywood swell till they bend up,” he said. “Imagine this is the condition we have to live in. This place have a lot of children and they have to dwell in the water. Poor people different from rich people. They have more children,” he stated. South Ruimveldt was also under water last night. According to one resident, the Caneview Avenue canal had overtopped onto the road, causing the water to be at the same level as the road and the parapet.
The floodwater was seen to be reducing in Subryanville and some parts of Kitty, while Hadfield Street remained swamped
