By Vanessa Braithwaite

LUMBER trucks are giving Kwakwani residents a corporate headache, as they are not only destroying the roads with their excessive payload, but are shaking residents’ houses when they lumber through the community, in process sometimes waking residents out of their sleep.Kwakwani residents came out in their numbers to voice their concerns when Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman and Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson, along with a team from both ministries, paid a visit to the community last Saturday.

The ministers held a public meeting aimed at bringing solutions to several matters of concern to the residents.
Scores of residents attended this meeting, welcomed the team, and ventilated several matters that needed urgent attention.

One of the major issues raised was the traversing of lumber trucks on the community roads. Many persons who deemed this very unsafe and dangerous asked the ministers to bring about a solution to the issue. The residents complained that the trucks are hastening complete destruction of the roads, which are already in a deplorable state, and they said that the impact of the trucks’ passing through their community is so great that house structures are shifted whenever they pass.

Kwakwani’s roads are not gazetted, and lumber trucks traverse them without considering that the time of their passage might be when persons are resting or children are using the road.

One elderly resident complained that the trucks are a noise nuisance in the community, and her blood pressure has been spiked by their presence in the community.

“Mr Minister, these roads are not gazetted, and it is very unsafe for children, and it is a noise nuisance to me, as an elderly citizen,” the resident said.

The residents also complained that the community’s natural resources were being carried away by these trucks, without accountability or evidence as to how the community is benefiting from depletion of its resources. In addition, there is, throughout the community, no sawmill to add value to the wood in an effort to create local employment.

NO VALUE-ADDED PRODUCTION
“There is nowhere in the community in which value is added to the wood to relieve the poverty in the community,” one resident lamented.

Residents also recommended that a toll booth be instituted to generate money to maintain the roads within the community.

Minister David Patterson told the residents that he is cognisant of the ‘road’ issues plaguing the community, and he has allocated $100 million to repair and construct roads within the community, including gazetted roads for the lumber trucks.

ROADS TO BE ASPHALTED
He said he is in process of securing a loan to use for asphalting the roads. The minister said the aggregates used in road construction, such as sand and laterite, can be sourced right in Kwakwani, and persons within the community could supply these as a means of creating temporary employment.

He is also hoping that a resident can be contracted for the project.

TEENAGE PREGNANCIES
The residents pointed out several issues of concern facing the education system in the community. These include the lack of counsellors in the secondary school. They believe there is dire need for counsellors in view of the increased incidence of teenage pregnancy in the community. These, they claim, are not being reported to the relevant authorities, and the alleged fathers are not being prosecuted.

“My 13-year-old granddaughter got a baby with a man and delivered it at the Kwakwani Hospital, and nobody reported it; and it is happening steady in this community,” an elderly woman revealed. “This is statuary rape, minister!” she lamented.

Another resident recommended that a facility be built in the community to facilitate extra-curricular activities for the young girls who are not academically inclined, to decrease the level of teenage pregnancies and school dropouts.

The residents also mentioned the lack of furniture in the school, and the lack of subject teachers, which can be deemed responsible for the unsatisfactory results in some subject areas at CXC.

A request was made for furniture to be made right in the community, rather than being sourced from other areas, as a means of providing employment.

One businessman brought to the attention of the ministers the limited transportation within the community to take the children to and from school.
“One day I saw a little child crying, and I ask him what happened and he said ‘I am not getting car to go home’,” the businessman shared. He said this is a regular problem facing the children, especially those living at the Waterfront area.

Minister Trotman promised the residents that he would make representation on their behalf to President Granger, to provide the community with a bus as part of his countrywide ‘5Bs’ initiative.

The minister also promised that he would make representation for the construction of a resource centre, instead of the library requested by the residents to be built in the community.

Some other issues that were raised include poor drainage in the community, the lack of drugs and testing facilities at the hospital, the absence of a commercial bank, the need to recommence a steamer service up the Berbice River, and the need to renovate sporting facilities in the community.

The ministers promised that these matters would be given priority, and that “Kwakwani will not be forgotten”.