Recurrent Floods

Editorial

It must have been an unpleasant experience for Minister Alan Ganoo to have been publicly taken to task by some local inhabitants of Chemin Grenier, last Monday, when he went down for a site visit following the downpour of April 24 which resulted in the flooding of major parts of the South of the island. Hon Ganoo was castigated for allegedly promises unkept in relation to infrastructure works to be undertaken in the locality and elsewhere to avert the kind of situation many thousands of Mauritians have had to live through during the recent torrential rains. Of course, all the blame for the recurrent distress that torrential rains bring in their wake around the island cannot be pinned down on Hon Ganoo given the multifactorial causes of such disasters, including institutional slack and/or overlapping, town and country planning deficiencies, budgetary constraints (?), etc. But he himself as well as his successors at the Ministry of Public Utilities cannot shirk responsibility for the mess many regions find themselves in after heavy downpours.

From 2000 to 2005 Alan Ganoo has held the office of Minister of Public Utilities – the principal ministry whose mandate is, amongst others, to work out and implement plans to prevent floods, or at least to minimise them to the point of eliminating their catastrophic effects – not just in Port Louis as it happened in 2013 at Caudan, but also everywhere else in the island. As Minister of Public Utilities in 2003, he was expected to take appropriate and effective action on the findings and recommendations of the Gibb report entitled “Study of Land Drainage System of Mauritius”, and dated April 2003 – itself preceded by an advance report of the Consultant’s findings on flood prone areas. It is not known what has been concretely done to fulfil that specific part of the Public Utilities’ mandate by successive ministers, but billions have been poured in infrastructure works around the island – and we remain to date vulnerable to such disasters as happened even as recently as last Saturday.

The Gibb Report recommended the setting up of a ‘permanent, overarching and pro-active Integrated Water Resources Management Authority that would oversee all rainfall water management practices over every square inch of the national territory inclusive of our coastal waters. Such an Authority would have had enforcement powers as regards rainfall effects over local administrations (city, town, district, and village councils), over the various authorities concerned with urban and rural land use including infrastructure projects, with all land under agriculture, with all forests and other state lands and natural watercourses, with aquifers, with irrigation systems, etc. The Authority would also have enforcement powers regarding the proper maintenance of and improvements to historical purpose-built drainage systems and the construction of any new drainage systems that might become necessary. It would also have to work in close liaison with other authorities such as the Central Water Authority, and with authorities responsible for the prevention of soil erosion.’

There has also been Justice Domah’s Fact-Finding Committee, which was set up in March 2008 after floods in the north of the island, particularly at Mon Goût. The Domah report, released on March 23, 2009, highlighted the “systemic gaps” that led to such disasters and advocated an integrated strategy for the management of natural risks, to replace the approach adopted so far which remains only “defensive and reactive”. Again, we unfortunately do not seem to have gone far in the implementation of much of Justice Domah’s recommendations. For one, that the laying of proper drains combined with other ancillary associated works can be effective has been demonstrated in Fond du Sac and environs, where there has been no flooding this time, although it must be said that the area didn’t receive as much torrential rain. But it does prove the point – that drains in flood prone areas, for example, already identified in the pre-cited reports must be one of the top priorities in the next budget.

With the onset of climate change, heavy downpours and droughts are likely to become more, not less frequent. This calls for urgent prioritising of all the issues related to infrastructure projects, including drainage systems, etc., that need to be revisited and implemented at the earliest rather spending billions of taxpayers’ money in white elephants at Cote d’Or and elsewhere.

* Published in print edition on 30 April 2021