Dear Editor,

Community Development is noble work. After ten months in office as Councillors of Constituency 14: South Ruimveldt / Ruimveldt Industrial Estate, yours truly and Noelle Chow-Chee have seen tangible gains. As 2017 commenced we have been meeting with community leaders, aimed at producing our Five Year Strategic Plan for Constituency 14, ‘A Strong, Resilient Community.’ Such a Plan captures the vision for our Constituency while being a tool for continuity; a working document and a measure for the development of our community.Constituency 14 hopes to be the first in five (5) areas: (1) Producing a Strategic Plan for the Constituency, (2) Publishing its own Newsletter/Newspaper, (3) A sustainable community sanitation programme, (4) A Flood Resilient Constituency  (5) Champion of GREEN initiatives.
Security
Constituency 14 has two active Community Policing Groups and another in its embryonic stages. It is our hope to create more such groups, which bolsters the work of our national police, providing the first line of defence for our residents. We hope to continually provide capacity building by working with the Community Policing Organisation of Guyana (CPOG), and related agencies. We intend to secure Constituency 14 with the utilization of CCTV Cameras with links to a Policing Group Command Center in our Constituency.
Communication
We will improve our engagement with residents at regular intervals, especially engaging our youths towards community work. Residents ideas and feedback are also invaluable. We intend to fully utilize social media assets (residents can at Facebook Page, “Constituency 14”) as well and traditional media, as such this ‘Letter to the Editor’. We also believe that a physical newsletter/newspaper has its place in bridging our information and communication gap. Additionally, we are in talks with radio station 93.1, which is headquartered in our Constituency, to allow us a 15 – 30 minutes programme to bring residents up to date with community news. We aim for a culture of engagement and empowerment.
Housing Regularisation
There are two areas is the Constituency where “squatting” is taking place. Our vision is to ensure that both areas meet the minimum housing standard. We have already engaged the Central Housing and Planning Authority CH&PA) for assistance in making sure this is a reality.
Additionally, we aim to encourage home builders in our community to ensure as far as is practical that homes are environmentally friendly, and energy efficient if not totally solar powered, inclusive of lighting used for open spaces. We intend to engage the Guyana Energy Agency towards this end, cognizant that home design, and layout impacts energy cost.
Solid Waste Management
Our Constituency must be a leader in our solid waste management capabilities. We have been examining the ‘Cleanliness and Citizenship – Community-Led Total Sanitation’ (C&C-CLTS) framework. Such an initiative “presents a programme for communities to progress from clean-up campaigns, to a sustainable environmental programme to motivate, mobilize and organize communities to reduce the practice of ‘Open Garbage Disposal’ (OGD) and clean up communities so they become ‘Open Garbage Disposal Free’ (OGDF) and environmentally friendly; this is done by igniting and sustaining a change in sanitation and environmental behavior,” according to specialist Audreyanna Thomas.
More broadly, we will continue to engage our National Integrated Solid Waste Management Strategy, especially focusing on issues like household composting, biogas generation aimed at reducing organic waste, recycling. Additionally, we intend to engage the Ministry of Communities as partners in implementing its public awareness campaign aimed at introducing primary schools students to the concept of waste separation and educating them on the benefits of adopting safe waste disposal habits.
100 per cent Rates & Taxes Collection
We have an appreciation that a large part of expenditures for services provided by City Hall comes from revenues received from Rates & Taxes. We will continue to encourage residents at every opportunity to do their part in paying their Rates and Taxes so that they can enjoy all the city services available to them.
Flood Resilience
With the submission of the Dutch Risk Reduction (DDR) Team’s final report, ‘Analysis of Drainage System in Georgetown, Guyana’ (2016), we seem closer to mitigating floods and their effects from South Ruimveldt since the DRR Team’s work focused primarily on South Ruimveldt as a catchment area. According to the Team’s Final Report, “Using the input from the local drainage system analysis, measured geometric data and simplified boundary conditions a full model of the South-Ruimveldt catchment was developed. This model can be used to assess and compare the effect of different interventions.”
We intend to continue to engage the inter-agency task force put in place to manage and improve the drainage in Georgetown: comprising City Hall, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority and Ministry of Communities. We intend to put together, also, a Community Flood Response Team of Volunteers.
Efficient Management of Open Spaces
Constituency 14 is a beautifully laid out expanse of real estate.  Our trees are priceless, knowing that they influence meteorological and climatic effects at all scales of a city, from parks to entire neighborhoods. Our open green spaces then becomes our treasures to our residents, especially our children. We intend to produce a policy that preserves the trees in our Constituency while encouraging residents to grow more plants, especially vegetables, ensuring that we are the garden of the Garden City’.
These are but some of the broad areas we will be focusing on as well as continuing the work of our Constituency Manager Brenda Williams and her team in the area of our remedial learning programme with free meals for student and an children feeding program for children in the locality; as well as our empowerment program with a specific focus on women. As well as capitalizing on the ‘Citizen Security Strengthening Programme’ with it skills training aimed at reducing crime and violence among our youth. Additionally seeking out other opportunities which will benefit our youths.
In the article ‘5 Essential Factors for Creating a Framework for Municipal Resiliency,’ Cathy Rust notes that the fifth factor is “Tenacity to implement the vision.” Rust states that, “The best way for this to happen smoothly is to create an open dialogue with your stakeholders – business, residents, local institutions etc. It is through these discussions, workshops, capacity building and constant communication that progress toward a resilient community can be best achieved.”
This is a fact we know firsthand. We will continue to work with all our partners who have been integral to our success over the last ten months and well as we are eager to bring on board new ones, predominantly those which for the Industrial Site area of Constituency 14, as we advance the development of our Constituency together.

Yours faithfully,

Councillors Sherod Duncan; Noelle Chow-Chee