By Jared Liddell

NEWLY-appointed Minster within the Ministry of Housing and Water, Susan Rodrigues met Monday for the first time with residents of the Lust-en-Rust Housing Scheme in Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), and by the time she was done talking with them, she had them convinced she had their best interest at heart.

She began by underscoring the government’s commitment to development, stating that with her at its helm, the Ministry of Housing will be tackling some of their most pressing issues and concerns, so as to ensure that everyone is able to live comfortably.

Minister Rodrigues further piqued her audience’s interest by telling them of the various plans her ministry already has earmarked to tackle, and that the purpose of her visit to the community that day was so as to get to know them better, and to hear for herself what are some of the majors issues plaguing them.

She assured residents of the relatively young community that the Ministry has already started working on addressing some of the issues they had previously highlighted to the last administration, and that she already has a team working on ensuring that they take on board some of the suggestions they share with them when
devising what plan of action is best suited to their particular developmental needs going forward.
Several residents told the minister how pleased they were that, busy as she no doubt is, she was able to spare the time to meet and talk with them, and see for herself the conditions under which they were living.

Vanessa Peters, who said she’d only moved into the neighbourhood a few months ago, told of the myriad issues she wants the minister to pay keen attention to, one of which is the deplorable state of the roads and streets leading to and running through the community. She explained that not only is the state of the roads damaging person’s vehicles, but they also pose a security risk, as most public transportation operators are loathe to safely take persons home, or as close to home as possible.
“No vehicles want to drive through these streets; none of them want to come and damage their vehicles,” Peters said. “So persons who don’t have their own transportation have to come out and walk from the main road to all the way in here. And that’s not safe, especially for persons who have to come in the evening hours.”
She further highlighted that while most residents have access to electricity, the major issue is access to potable water. She stated that while many residents don’t have to this vital service, the few that do barely get any at all, since the pressure is not enough for the water to flow from the standpipes.
Amrit Jawahir, another resident, noted that while there are many issues he would like to see addressed, the most immediate one is the very access to potable water of which Peters spoke.

He shared with the minister that it takes his entire family nearly 15 minutes to fetch whatever water they need from the scheme closest to theirs.
“Yeah, it’s difficult because sometimes we come home at 6, and we have to be walking ‘til to the other scheme to get water. Sometimes we finish fulling water ‘til ten or eleven o’clock at night, and it’s inconvenient, ‘cause we still have work in the morning and all that. So, it ain’t mekking sense that we aren’t able to access water when we come home.”

Jawahir said that presently, everyone in the community, he included, is forced to rely on the rain to fill their water tanks, or pay the $8,000 it costs to purchase a tank of water.

Speaking specifically to the enormous economic strain it puts on one to buy water, Jawahir said he has five water tanks, and they only last his family three weeks.
Rawle Tucker, who has lived in the area for over three years, has similar concerns, and he, too, spoke of how difficult it is to get water for everyday use. He recalled how, in the past, he and other residents had to resort to filling up on water from the canal so as to allow their families access to water.
“We have several issues in this Scheme; most of them we could overlook, but not getting access to water is a big one, and we have to find a way to make do with what we have,” Tucker said, adding: “There is no assistance for us to get water.”

After paying rapt attention to what everyone had to say, Minister Rodrigues apparently resolved there and then to do something about the situation, and do it fast, as within an hour or so of leaving that community to pay another one a visit, she was announcing plans to have water running at full throttle in the community by weekend.
But before leaving, however, she promised Lust-en-Rust residents that there will be a significant restructuring of how the Ministry of Housing and Water and sister agencies such as the Guyana Water Inc. do business, so as to ensure that in future, issues such as access to water and key infrastructural improvements and distribution and allocation of land are done in a more organised manner, and that residents have access to all of the necessary resources they may need.