KENNEDY Grove residents yesterday requested a meeting with the government’s infrastructure committee, which is expected to outline to them the findings and recommendations of a technical team that last month examined the flood-prone area.

Kennedy Grove, a government-sponsored housing scheme, is located near Palmers Cross in a natural runoff zone, which means the area is destined to flooding during periods of heavy rainfall.

At a meeting yesterday, Labour and Social Security Minister Horace Dalley told residents that Prime Minister PJ Patterson saw the report last Monday, and had instructed Water and Housing Minister Donald Buchanan, Transport and Works Minister Robert Pickersgill and Land and Environment Minister Dean Peart to have the matter resolved immediately.

Member of Parliament for the South East Clarendon, Ruddy Spencer, councillors and caretakers for the area were also present at the meeting.

In addition, Dalley told the gathering that the technical team, after examining the area, had come up with three immediate problems that have to be remedied. However, he did not give details.

“The technical people have put forward to the government that the… road rehabilitation leading up to the scheme should be done,” he said.

“They are examining a possibility of draining the area to the Rio Minho, but there are ideas about that from other engineers, because it is felt in the entire Top Cross area that there are tributaries that should drain the area to the Rio Minho,”

However, he added that there were other experts that are of the opinion that this would not be possible.

Additionally, Dalley told the residents that the technical team recommended that a hydro-geological study that they started of the entire area should be completed.

“They (technical team) reported to us on Monday of some very large deposits of underground water in the area,” he said. “They have pinpointed about four different areas where there is water underground in the general vicinity.”

In the meantime, Minister Dalley urged the residents to reconsider taking legal action against the government and the developers.

“If you decide to take legal proceedings, of course it will not disillusion, but it will make the problem a little bit more complex,” he said.

However, Spencer told Dalley that the residents would reconsider their stance after they had seen the recommendations from the technical team that would be presented by the infrastructure committee.

“At that time they will be in a better position to sit and to review their position, based on that meeting,” Spencer said, adding that until then we can’t do anything – everything has to stay the way it is.”

Yesterday, frustrated Kennedy Grove residents at the meeting in the housing scheme complained that not only the residents in the low-lying areas were affected. They also complained that the poor infrastructure caused leaks, which damaged their furniture.

Meanwhile, some residents urged the government to also consider relocating them.