Yesterday, the rains caused quite a number of the City's streets to flood, or worsen the potholes that already exist. It was an annoyance
for everyone, but a few hours later, the water went down.
But for others, such as the residents of the "Jerusalem" area, the pain lingers for days, which turns into weeks, and sometimes into
months.
Today, one of the residents invited us in to see what has become their reality while they wait for Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley to pave the City's Streets, hopefully getting to their area sometime soon.
She told us she's spoken with both Bradley and her Area Rep., Patrick Faber, who she says has only promised to help - in a situation of dire desperation:
Tanya Pantin - Resident - Jerusalem
"Well for years that we have lived in the Antelope Street extension area it has been difficult even to get to work on a daily basis. Sometimes the children would have to remain at home because the water would come up so high and we would actually be trapped, not being able to get out. Yesterday morning, once we got up, we found out that the water was so high that my daughter and I, we decided that we would come to this area which is a dump for land filling and we retrieved about 50 or more tyres that you have seen over there and we actually decided to make a "London bridge" out of that."
"As I was standing there getting the tyres I noticed that a child was passing with his little sister to take him to school and they fell. They had to return back home and change all over again. When I saw that, immediately I told my daughter, you know what, it already took us about 2 hours to find materials like old boards, old door or whatever we could find from the rubble and we built the first bridge. After that we decided that we would build a second bridge. It has been very difficult. I have spoken to the mayor personally. I have spoken to Minister Faber personally and yet to this point we have had nobody not from the City Council, not from the Minister or anybody come back here to aid us as I have told them the condition when it is dry its different from when its actually raining. As you guys notice when we were walking over the water, the heavy stench that come from the water. A lot of children are exposed to itch, fungus - all these kinds of things. We look at the news and we see it and we hear it in other areas, but I don't think nobody had made an effort to actually come on this "Jerusalem" area to find out what has been going on with the water here and then we have the mud that we have to deal with after the water goes down. There isn't any drainage behind here, so the water doesn't have anywhere to run off and whenever the water goes down then we have the issue with mud afterwards."
According to the residents, who we spoke to off the record, they try to help themselves by gathering money to pay different dump truck drivers to dump rubble on the road to at least try to alleviate the problem.
Email
Print