President satisfied with work done to mitigate flooding   |13 January 2023

President Ramkalawan during his meeting yesterday with members of the high-level committee on flooding

• ‘Flood free Victoria’ committee to extend its scope of work

President Wavel Ramkalawan yesterday met with members of the high-level committee on flooding.

The meeting, the first for the year, was to lead discussion on the works that have already been done, including those that are still ongoing, in regards to projects to tackle flooding previously identified pre-December 2022 and to look at new issues that have come up through the December 2022 rainfall and on the way forward.

The ‘flood free Victoria’ high-level committee, chaired by the President, was set up in March 2022 to address flooding issues following flooding caused by heavy rains in that month in Victoria and Mont Fleuri and given the quick response that has resulted in mitigating the impact of flooding in those areas, the committee is now called ‘Flood Free Seychelles’, broadening its scope of work to attend to flooding in the country in general.  

Apart from holding physical meetings for discussions, the members are communicating via the ‘Flood Free Seychelles’ Whatsup group for prompt response among key partners.

Work to mitigate flooding in those areas include de-silting of rivers, reinforcement of the footing of drain channel and upgrading of channel walls and the removal and realignment of certain utilities within some drainage channels.

During the meeting, President Ramkalawan thanked the committee for the work done to mitigate flooding in the areas previously affected.

He also congratulated them for their promptness in providing their assistance during the rainfall in December to which some issues with regard to drainage to mitigate flooding have been identified, mostly in Plaisance, Pointe Larue, Au Cap and Anse Royale districts.

Speaking to the press after the meeting, the chief executive of the Seychelles Infrastructure Agency, Jitesh Shah, said that most of the flood mitigation works previously identified after the March 2022 rainfall have been completed.

He added the committee is satisfied with the work done given that it has had a positive impact in preventing the risk of flooding in those areas where the flooding took place, especially in Victoria and at Corgate Estate in Mont Fleuri, two areas which were heavily impacted. 

Mr Shah said that the issues recently identified and have to be rectified, are not all necessarily new issues as some of them are long-standing issues that had been there but have recently manifested as severe flooding problems again.

He noted there has been a bit of analysis that has been done from the technical side a few weeks back through a technical meeting and the next step is to see how to prioritise the different projects.

“We are going to be working together as a team for us to see which are the most heavily impacted areas where there are flooding so that we can prioritise those,” said Mr Shah who noted that as human resources as well as funding are limited they do need to go through the prioritise process for the approval of the committee for the implementation of these works.

Mr Shah said that the incoming projects entail some detailed design works in the first place including some negotiations with land owners where it is felt appropriate for certain portions of their property to be used as part of the solutions.

He noted that they have also been holding certain discussions and will continue to do so with people who have not taken their responsibility with regard to development of their property that has had a direct impact on the occurrence of certain flooding.
He added that the discussion with them is to ensure that a more suitable and long term solution to mitigate flooding is found.

He noted that while Praslin and La Digue have not yet felt the impact of flooding lately, the committee is still monitoring the flooding mitigation project in place on the two islands to ensure its effectiveness to prevent flooding during heavy rainfall.  

Text & photo by Patrick Joubert