May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed says the per­sis­tent flood­ing chal­lenges plagu­ing the Bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas are the re­sult of years of in­fra­struc­tur­al ne­glect and can­not be re­solved overnight.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Sat­ur­day, May­or Mo­hammed point­ed to the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cus­ing it of fail­ing to in­vest in crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and ne­glect­ing reg­u­lar main­te­nance of the bor­ough’s drainage sys­tems.

“The flood­ing and drainage is­sues we face to­day were not on­ly fore­see­able but, sad­ly, in­evitable,” Mo­hammed said. “Years of un­der­in­vest­ment and a lack of con­sis­tent up­keep have left many com­mu­ni­ties vul­ner­a­ble to even mod­er­ate rain­fall.”