LAST week the Pepperpot Magazine visited the quiet, breezy village of Stewartville South to highlight the way of life of the locals, most of whom are sugar workers.

Stewartville South is also known as Bangladesh Street. The name was derived when it was first established to relocate sugar workers and their families from a squatting area near the Leonora Sugar Estate Side Line Dam in the 1980s.

It was said that the village, which consists of one street bordered by Stewartville Line Top and Stewartville New Housing Scheme, used to be a place of constant flooding whenever it rains.

Back then, the country Bangladesh was featured as being flooded and the name was birthed and it is still referred to as Bangladesh Street today.

Stewartville is the only village that was once bordered by two sugar estates, but today only one of the two estates are operational. This estate provides employment for a lot of people within the village.

Stewartville South can be accessed via Tamarind Dam from the main public road then onto Line Top, a one-street village which is a well-kept place free of garbage.

The village is between Leonora and Uitvlugt.

It is a quaint street which benefitted from an all-weather road a few years ago, replacing a mud dam and has enhanced the lives of the people living there and even those passing through.

Bangladesh Street has one shop, a seamstress, a rum shop, a caterer for icing and cupcakes, small business owners and a lot of sugar workers and others attached to the Stewartville/Cornelia Ida Neighborhood Democratic Council (NDC) located at Tamarind Dam.

It is a one street-village which is mostly quiet except for a few loud neighbours, but generally, life is quiet and everything is well with the folk living there.

The people are very welcoming, hospitable and friendly and would greet you without any hesitation and invite you to their homes to have a drink of a cold beverage, coffee or tea, along with biscuits and snacks.

At the end of the street, there is a canal with a ball field and the continuation of the street leads to the main public road through another section of the community.

The village comprises of mostly Indo Guyanese and in that one street the locals reside like a large family and look over each other’s welfare.

There are some retirees in the village, elders, a handful who are not in good health and others, who have been living there from the inception during the relocation period.

It had resembled a shanty town with small cottages and other makeshift structures but over the years the place has developed and modern houses replaced old zinc ones.

The yards and the environment in Stewartville South are tidy and the same can be said for the houses which are well-painted in different colours and the people seems very comfortable.

NDC on Bangladesh Housing Scheme
According to Stewartville/Cornelia Ida NDC Deputy Chairman, Paul Narine Bangladesh Housing Scheme South/West was established in the 1980s when the then Estate Manager of Leonora allocated estate lands to the workers who were squatting near the estate.

He reported that they are living on the sideline dam at Leonora and it is believed that 71 houses were allocated plots.

Narine stated that the population size has likely changed over the years but the area was regularised and residents are now benefitting from electricity, potable water supply, internet and landline phones.

He disclosed that the mud dam running through the village was replaced with an all-weather road and they are currently paving the road to be asphalted on Line Top which is about 50 metres to the ball field and around.

Narine added that in the New Housing Scheme will see that area which was once cane fields being transformed into a large community.

The NDC Deputy Chairman added that Stewartville Line Top will be paved with double base tar surface which is expected to start soon since preparatory works are completed.

In addition, the ball field will be upgraded in which some land filling will be done to lift the standard of the place for recreational activities.

Narine pointed out that within the NDC they have a total of 18 Community Infrastructure Improvement Programme (CIIP) workers who maintain the parapets by manual garbage collection and clean the drains in the villages that falls under their catchment.