THE beleaguered but vocal nonagenarian (ninety-year-old) Jasodia Rajja of Best Village, West Coast Demerara will, within a matter of weeks, be celebrating her 91st birth anniversary, but she is not looking forward to the occasion with great anticipation, as most nonagenarians do.

Rather, having experienced the scare of her life from witnessing electrical wires on her house sparking wildly a few weeks ago, she is still nervous when she contemplates the conflagration that could have ensued because of the perceived ineptitude of some employees of the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL).

In fact, she claims it is a usual occurrence for the GPL wires in front of her Lot ‘D’ Best Road home to spark from time to time, but what occurred on February 10 was about her scariest experience with those wires. She explained that, from her electric line, which is linked to the power pole in front of her house, GPL is feeding about eight buildings in her immediate surroundings, instead of giving them independent lines. She is contending that there is too much load on the electric wire; and this, she thinks, is the source of the sparking.

Jasodia said her ‘heart is in her hand’ every day, proverbially, of course; and she can scarcely sleep at nights, for fear that the buildings would suddenly be engulfed in flames and neither she nor her disabled daughter would be able to escape the consequences if not evacuated quickly enough.

Her daughter, Norma Hitlall, is 61 years old, but is a diabetic, is bedridden, and is suffering from a stroke. Moreover, she is blind in both eyes, and has lost her speech.

Jasodia had given one of her houses to this daughter as a wedding present. Her daughter is still living in the front house on the lot, but following her illness, Jasodia had, out of compassion and motherly love, taken on the upkeep of both homes; thus she spends most of the time with her sick daughter and 23-year-old granddaughter, Alana.

Subsequent to her mother taking ill, Alana has been impelled to forgo her studies and a quest to find employment in order to help provide home care for her mother, because even though her nonagenarian grandmother has been giving selflessly to her mother, there is a limit to how much she could do at age 90+.

Jasodia says she is at her wits’ end to find money to pay water rates and light bills; and to aggravate the situation, the power supply to the home of her ailing daughter has recently been disconnected. As if that were not enough, the elderly woman is being further irked by another matter over which she seemingly has no control: She claims she is being made to pay water bills even though, at her age, she should be exempted from making such payments.

She showed this publication three bills issued to her over the last three months, and receipts for payments she had made. Peeved and outraged, therefore, at what has been referred to as the ongoing injustice being meted out to her allegedly by staff within the two public utility corporations, Jasodia is complaining that the older she gets, the more they may want to take her for granted and give her a proverbial ride.

The devastated old woman said her son “travelled all the way to Georgetown” to report the matter at the Middle Street office of the Guyana Power and Light Inc. He reported to her that the officer in Georgetown called personnel at West Demerara and instructed them to visit Jasodia’s premises, detach the wires and plant poles to accommodate them.

“They come yes,” she said with forlorn resignation, “but they look around fuh see where they could jook to put de posts, and they never come back again.” And that is as far as her matter got, she said.

Jasodia is desperately appealing for somebody – anybody – to hear of her plight and step in to offer her assistance.

By Shirley Thomas