Over the past few weeks Albousytown residents have transformed their community’s drainage system under the government’s billion-dollar ‘Clean-up my country’ initiative and villagers are primed to take on other projects to sustain and further enhance their environment.
According to a Govern-ment Information Agency (GINA) report, the community was divided into 15 blocks for better management and monitoring and the 70 workers, mostly youth, were divided into three groups to tackle the heavily silted drains.
Commenting on the startling change in the appearance of the community, Heston Bostwick echoed the view of many residents when he praised the initiative. “It is for the first time we’re really seeing back the concrete drains… only the ones who were raised here would’ve known there were concrete drains here,” Bostwick said.
Residents who were employed on the project were also pleased that workers were sourced from within the community. Employee,
Jermaine Ashton said, “There’s no time to idle, as a community we’re doing something productive, and it’s good to see…everybody’s coming together and dealing as one… the place isn’t flooding anymore when the rain falls, and it’s all due to the community coming together.”
MP Manzoor Nadir was impressed by the progress of the work and he noted that workers had found solutions to a number of teething problems, like fixing dilapidated drains and finding drain covers, during the exercise.
“Manholes are spaced far apart, so what we had to do was remove all garbage and silt directly by these manholes and cleared around it, half the distance to the other holes, and go to the other hole and do the same,” a team supervisor, James Walcott, explained.
Residents also want to see additional issues addressed, according to the report. “…They want to see here cleaned and dedicated portions of this Independence Boulevard for recreational purposes,” Nadir said, before calling for better sustainability and maintenance of the drainage facilities to ensure they do not return to their former dire state.
Residents reiterated calls for the preservation of their revitalised community and made a number of recommendations, including chaining garbage bins to utility poles in order to counter littering, damage and/or theft of the bin and stricter monitoring of passers-by, since the view was expressed that they are usually the litter bugs.
One billion dollars was allocated in this year’s national budget for a countrywide clean-up exercise, half of which has been set aside for works in Georgetown, GINA said. The exercise is managed and monitored by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development.
