As Barbados enters the busiest period of the Atlantic hurricane season and gears up for its iconic annual Grand Kadooment celebration, government work crews have sharply intensified island-wide drain clearance and roadside cleanup initiatives to cut flood risks and spruce up major thoroughfares ahead of the events.
On Thursday, reporters from Barbados TODAY documented crews along the busy Mighty Grynner Highway extracting accumulated waste including plastic bags, food containers, discarded wood and other forms of debris that had clogged drainage systems along the route. A second adjacent team was simultaneously carrying out roadside beautification work to tidy up public spaces near the highway.
Justin Bynoe, team leader with the Barbados Drainage Division, explained that the current push is part of a sustained islandwide program designed to clear blocked drainage infrastructure and guarantee unobstructed water flow during periods of intense rainfall, which are common during the Caribbean hurricane season. “That’s the core purpose of this work: to clear debris out of drains and make sure the entire water course runs properly,” Bynoe stated in an interview on site.
While the work also delivers a cosmetic upgrade to roadways ahead of Crop Over festival’s climax event Grand Kadooment, Bynoe emphasized that flood prevention remains the overriding priority of the initiative. “Even though we want the island to look neat and welcoming for Kadooment, our main goal is removing blockages. Drains across the country have accumulated all kinds of trash – plastic bags, disposable cups, wooden crates, scrap wood and all sorts of other items that restrict water flow. Clearing these out means we won’t see widespread flooding on roads when heavy rain hits, especially with hurricane season upon us,” he added.
Multiple coordinated work crews have been deployed simultaneously across a wide range of communities, including Two Mile Hill, Bawdens, Belleplaine, Barclays Hill, Spring Garden and multiple districts in Christ Church to cover as much ground as possible. According to Bynoe, two teams were assigned just to the Mighty Grynner Highway corridor on Thursday, each staffed with five full-time workers to complete the clearance work efficiently.
Minister of Home Affairs Gregory Nicholls confirmed that the country’s national hurricane preparedness program is advancing on schedule, with drainage clearance marked as a core activity that is being accelerated ahead of the season’s peak. “From my position chairing the Emergency Management Advisory Council, I’ve received consistent updates that the committees responsible for road clearance and port clearing are on track with their planned work, and there have been no major setbacks reported,” Nicholls said. “I can see firsthand that work is progressing well, and we are now ramping up these operations even more. We can see drains being cleared across the island, and all routine preparedness work is proceeding as planned.”
Nicholls also appealed to the general public to actively contribute to the effort by contacting the Department of Emergency Management to report any blocked drains or areas that require maintenance attention, so crews can be dispatched to resolve issues before they lead to flooding. “If community members have areas of concern that need clearing, they just need to reach out to the emergency management department, and we will coordinate to get those situations addressed,” the minister added.
For Bynoe, who has been part of the drainage program for an extended period, the work carries personal as well as public value. “Honestly, I’ve been doing this for years, and I genuinely enjoy it,” he said. “It’s a really important program because it helps the whole of Barbados. That’s the plain truth.”