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Sorento drainage issue under control |23 May 2022

Sorento drainage issue under control

Due to heavy rains Seychelles experienced over the weekend, a situation arose at Sorento where heavy water and red earth came down a drain onto the main road causing difficulty for road users.

Work to improve drainage at the area was undertaken and by three in the afternoon yesterday the situation was under control.

The chief executive of the Seychelles Infrastructure Agency (SIA), Jitesh Shah, was on site yesterday as soon as he got the alert around noon.

“The rains of last (Saturday) night or may be this (Sunday) morning provoked a landslide which broke barriers causing the place to have a mini waterfall. Some private landowners in the area are being criticised on social media for that but we want to assure the public that this is a project undertaken by the government even though it is on private land,” explained Mr Shah.

Immediately the SIA contacted the contractors to come and clear the roads which were filled with mud coming from the drainage, thus averting potential accidents for the road users.

“The other home owners in that region have confirmed that they have been affected by the drainage issue. In the past weeks, we have been having discussions with the inhabitants of this region specifically and they have been telling us the problems they were having due to some drainage issues in that area. This project is part of the land bank project we are doing and it is important to note that this is not an active drain. We have not yet finished working on that and we have put blockages higher up to divert the flow of water. Unfortunately, there has been a landslide which damaged the barriers.”

“There was also the issue of red earth coming down and SIA had the same issue since November last year but they put in place some mitigation measures which stopped it but again due to the landslide, some earth came down,” shared the CEO of SIA.

Mr Shah also noted that many preventive works have been done during the last two weeks in many regions such as Anse Boileau, Pointe Larue and in town which prevented flooding in these areas.

The accompanying photos show work being carried out to clear the road at Sorento from debris brought about by the landslide.

 

Text & photos by Vidya Gappy

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