PM commits to addressing Lime Walk, adjoining districts woes
Published:Thursday | June 9, 2022 | 12:05 AM
Asha Wilks/Gleaner Writer
Amid the celebration of last Friday’s handover ceremony for a three-bedroom home to a resident of Lime Walk district in Bog Walk, St Catherine North Central Member of Parliament Natalie Neita Garvey pleaded with Prime Minister Andrew Holness to respond to the cry of residents who have been suffering from water shortages and poor road infrastructure for many years.
“As you came up the hill prime minister ... you would see what my farmers are going through, you would see what my students are going through, what my people are going through,” she said.
Neita Garvey explained that she inherited the bad road conditions from the late Enid Bennett, who served as MP many years before her.
“I am begging you ... the people of this community are asking that you ensure that we have proper roads to come up here ... take us another step further so that we can feel better in our homes,” she appealed.
The MP lamented that because of the poor road conditions, residents are forced to a near halt at certain bends along the roadway at nights. She said this makes road users prone to attacks from criminals who take advantage of their plight.
“So, in the interest of their security and their life and going to school, a begging you give them a little more,” she added.
There are over 650 households in Neita Garvey’s constituency.
Making special mention of Giblatore, Content, Bowers Wood, Springvale and Jew Pen Hill communities, she stated that many of them have never experienced water flowing from their pipes.
“For seven years I waited on an extraction licence from the WRC to take the water from the river at Springvale. I finally got approval last year,” she said.
The project will take $40 million to get water to only 250 households, she told The Gleaner, which would also benefit the Giblatore and Springvale primary schools where water has to be trucked twice per month to refill several tanks.
Though the National Water Commission has promised to intervene, Neita Garvey asked of Holness to expedite the approved project, noting that if “water is life then these people have died many times over”.
Some residents made outbursts that they have had to use up to twenty wipes to cleanse themselves due to the water crisis.
Catherine Edwards-Ellis, a resident, told The Gleaner that some residents have received assistance with water from Councillor Patricia Harris of the Angels division, which includes Lime Walk.
“With limited to no water at all is like we deh behind because from there is no water you can’t do nothing,” she said, adding that farmers suffer the most as they have to rely on rainfall.
“Your children dem going to school and dem cyah bathe fresh fi go school,” she said, pointing out that water used to bathe and wash had to be stored to flush toilets, wash vehicles and to water crops.
Another resident confessed that her seven-person household has been storing up to two to three weeks of dirty laundry because of a lack of water.
Holness, during his main address shared the sentiments of Neita Garvey, admitting that communities like Lime Walk district have suffered and have been neglected for many years.
However, he noted that he would be unable to issue “a palliative that is a sweet-sounding story that by tomorrow I will be able, by the stroke of a pen, give you the roads that you want”.
But the prime minister admitted that the MP and by extension the residents, had made a compelling case and that he would give attention to the issues raised and initiate discussions with the NWC.