Dear Editor,
Almost every day when I walk down the streets of Mahdia the people would ask me what is the Regional Democratic Council doing about the deplorable roads. Many of them believe that we can do more given the amount of revenue that is collected from this region. Some of them are of the opinion that we are collecting the revenue; unfortunately, they do not understand that we do not collect any revenue here and that all goes to central government.
Mahdia is the capital of Region Eight and the roads through the village are in a deplorable state filled with potholes. What is so disturbing is that when the rain falls and vehicles are passing, water from these potholes would splash up on the pedestrians, especially the schoolchildren. When we submitted our 2014 budget we included money to repair the inner roads in Mahdia; however, not one dollar was granted by the Ministry of Finance to repair the roads. Apparently in their opinion the residents in Mahdia and surrounding communities do not deserve good roads.
Given the amount of revenue that is collected from this region any responsible government would have ensured that the inner roads were in good order since that is where the schools, hospital, and the other government buildings are. At present an ambulance or a fire tender would not serve much purpose responding to an emergency, since by the time they reached the fire it would have already completely destroyed the building, or in the case of the patient he or she would have already died before receiving attention.
I remember earlier this year it was reported in the January 27 Kaieteur News that the Minister within the Ministry of Local Government & Regional Development Norman Whittaker responded to an accusation made earlier this year by our Regional Chairman that the government is wilfully neglecting the Region as it relates to making finances available for the revetment of roads. The Minister was quoted saying that the Regional Chairman should demonstrate initiative in engaging the miners in his region to assist in rehabilitating the roads via self-help.
Editor I would agree to ask the miners to assist in rehabilitating roads leading to their mining camps; however, to ask them to repair the inner roads of the village I believe is too much to ask, given that they are already paying their taxes in addition to their costs to maintain their operations.
For our Regional Chairman to ask the miners here to repair the inner roads would be tantamount to the Regional Chairmen in Regions Two, Three, Five and Six asking the sugar and rice farmers to repair roads in their villages. It would be very interesting to discover if the Minister had ever asked those Regional Chairmen to demonstrate initiative in engaging the sugar workers or the rice farmers to assist in rehabilitating roads.
Recently some miners have indicated to me that they would be more than willing to repair the roads here if the government stopped collecting taxes from them and allowed them to use the taxes to do the repairs on the roads.
Yours faithfully,
Naieem Gafoor
Regional Democratic Councillor
Region Eight