Of Floods and Drain Bonanza Budgets

Editorial

All the blame for the recurrent distress that torrential rains bring in their wake around the island – major parts of the South of the island were under water this week – cannot be pinned down on any one institution given the multifactorial causes of such disasters, including institutional slack and/or overlapping, town and country planning deficiencies, budgetary constraints, etc. Moreover, inadequate planning in construction, alteration of the natural courses of water in order to make way for infrastructure, loss of wetland, blocking of drains with debris have made Mauritius prone to flooding. Additionally, for the past few years, Mauritius has been experiencing an increase in the frequency of high intensity rainfall events which resulted in flash floods on several occasions. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Centre has identified 65 regions as flood prone areas throughout the island.

The government however cannot shirk responsibility for the mess many regions find themselves in after heavy downpours. It is the Ministry of Public Utilities which has been given the mandate 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. Successive governments were expected to take appropriate and effective action on the findings and recommendations of different studies that had been commissioned to help address this issue – for instance, the Gibb report “Study of Land Drainage System of Mauritius”, released in April 2003 – itself preceded by an advance report of the Consultant’s findings on flood prone areas. Little is known about what has been done concretely to mitigate the problem, but in the meantime billions have been earmarked for infrastructure works, especially in the construction of drains around the island, most notably in the 2021 budget. Even if many parts of the island remain to date vulnerable to such disasters as happened this week, where drain construction works have been implemented, for instance at Trois Boutiques, the inhabitants have been spared of the distress of earlier years in the wake of heavy downpours.

There had also been earlier 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 23 March 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”. How much has been achieved in the implementation of Justice Domah’s recommendations is not known. 

On the other hand, there is also the responsibility of sugar estates in the occurrence of heavier flooding in recent years. In an earlier contribution to this paper, Sada Reddi put across the view espoused by villagers in flood affected areas that it’s poor land management and the levelling of cane lands for easier cultivation and harvesting that have destroyed all the natural drains which in the past slowed down the flow of rain water from these fields. ‘For the inhabitants, the major cause of flooding were changes in land preparation and management on the sugar estates. The use of machinery and other vehicles on cane lands for cultivation and harvesting has compacted the soil between the rows of sugar cane plants. In the past, the soil and the ridges covered with trash, slowed the flow of water, and helped the water to percolate the soil. That is no more the case. The compacted soil causes massive rainfall run-off and speeds up the flow of water to the other sugarcane fields, which then goes to flood major roads where drains between the cane fields and the roads are inexistent.’ The villagers, who know their territory as no one else does – usually better than the experts -, speak from experience, and the authorities should have listened to them and taken appropriate remedial action.

Twenty years after the Gibb report, many years of commissioned studies and reports later, dozens of budgetary allocations have come and gone, yet the acute problems faced by inhabitants in the south last week or in the densely constructed Ebene area inexorably point to the fact that the “systemic gaps” have not adequately been addressed. Apart from the usual factors, such as sloth and inefficiency, or the pace of “concreting” that have accompanied development, or again the conflicting and buck-passing between elected regional bodies, ministries, agencies, and authorities, we may also have to factor in shoddy workmanship and poor supervision of corrective drain constructions. Lack of transparency and periodic reports on the usage made of the 2021 drain bonanza budget allocation of Rs 12 billion, a far cry above the usual Rs 1-2 billion annual budgets, leave room for considerable doubts that monies rather than rain water have been diverted to other usage. It is imperative that authorities demonstrate results and align actions with narrative or intentions.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 10 November 2023