I READ the piece in the Daily Chronicle about the Le Repentir Cemetery in Georgetown being cleaned up, trees being cut down, and the drainage being cleared; so I wish to ask you to give much-needed publicity to the neglect of the cemetery at Good Hope, East Coast Demerara.

The internal and surrounding drainage are either filled up or blocked causing it to be impassable and even impossible for mourners and friends of the deceased to negotiate, even during the dry season, much less through the rainy times, to reach the burial site without taking off their shoes and rolling up their clothes.

Tall bushes and overgrown trees have caused the cemetery to be an unkempt mini-forest. The walking passageways are blocked by tall trees, bushes and shrubs, or are too soggy to walk on.

Local businessmen/women have encroached also on the burial lands designated for the cemetery;and whenever there is rainfall, the land is flooded.

Drug addicts and animals usually frequent the place and sleep on the tombs, many of which are broken into by this neglect.

What needs to be done is, firstly, the NDC at Lusignan should cut down all the tall trees and overgrown grasses, and also clear the internal and outer drainage, as they are either blocked by greedy business people or are fully ignored by the NDC here, as silt builds up and causes blockages.

Also there should be a continuous, ongoing year-round maintenance of this cemetery. And, finally, the business people are to be stopped from, or persecuted for, encroaching on the cemetery lands.

Moreover, do not forget to stop the drug addicts from breaking into the tombs of our loved ones.
ROOPLALL DUDHNATH