THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) wants to spend $100M each year to keep  Le Repentir in good order and has included a ‘maintenance clause’ in its contract with Chung’s Global Enterprise.

Works have already started in the cemetery to upgrade roads, clean drains and remove overgrowth, and on a site visit Friday, Public Relations Officer Debra Lewis told the Chronicle that the intention going forward is to have the cemetery cleaned during a three-month period and then maintained over a six-month period.

“We spent about $240M in the past and still had to go back shortly after to do maintenance work. So now we have included a maintenance clause, so that works can be ongoing all the time; like an ongoing cleaning regime,” Lewis said.  Roads that were opened to the public in times past had to be closed because of the state of disrepair and overgrowth that had developed in the cemetery, but Lewis informed this newspaper that the municipality is working to have such roads opened to the public once again.

In view of this, she said the bridges will have to be repaired and lighting will have to be installed. While there is a definitive plan in place to bring these facilities on board, she said everything hinges on finances, because the municipality is covering the cemetery project with its own finances.  As in this past, when there were guards at the cemetery and armed rangers patrolling , Lewis said the City Council wants to re-implement these initiatives.

These, she noted, will serve as deterrents to residents using the cemetery to dump and burn refuse.  Assistant City Engineer Rasheed Kellman, who was also on site, spoke about plans that the City Council has to replace the current fence with one that caters more to the needs of the cemetery.  Plans are also afoot to have the cemetery extended, Kellman noted, to deal with the current overcrowding situation. The proposal entails that the cemetery will be extended to the unused and densely vegetated land between Cemetery Road and Mandela Avenue.

The extension is proposed to begin from the area closer to Mandela Avenue and the total dimensions of the extension will be 3000 feet to 600 feet, which will be divided into six plots. A number of works must be done to the land, including clearing away the dense vegetation.

Mayor Patricia Chase-Green had said that the estimated cost for this extension is around $45-$47M, but that there will be an official tendering process due to the size of the project.