With the rainy season fast approaching, Kingston Mayor Desmond McKenzie is a worried man. For, he has no money to clean the capital’s more than 50 gullies, most of which are crowded with rotting dogs, human and animal faeces, scandal bags of dead chickens, bundles of Styrofoam lunch boxes, decaying tree trunks, murky green fluid and chemical waste.

The mayor’s dilemma is made even worse by buck-passing between the local government ministry and the National Works Agency (NWA) over the responsibility for maintenance of the city’s vital water channels.

“The law says that the National Works Agency are responsible for the rehabilitation of gullies,” Patrick Wong, technical director in the Ministry of Local Government, told the Sunday Observer. “We at the ministry are responsible for cleaning them.”

But according to Vando Palmer, the NWA’s communications and customer service manager, Wong is talking rubbish.

“We have no such responsibility for fixing or rehabilitating gullies. Patrick Wong is being disingenuous or ignorant,” Palmer fumed. “If we are asked to assist a rehabilitation project, we will, but we do not have full responsibility for this.”

In fact, Palmer said, the NWA has responsibility only for the Sandy and McGregor gullies in Kingston and St Andrew, and the North Gully in Montego Bay.

Amid the confusion between the two state agencies, it emerged that neither of them knew exactly how many gullies were in the Corporate Area, or their names.

The Sunday Observer was directed to a technical assistant in the Ministry of Local Government’s Urban and Regional Planning Unit who said that approximately 56 gullies and 18 drains existed in the capital.

But those are preliminary figures from an inventory ordered by Local Government Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who apparently was dissatisfied with the lack of accurate data on gullies and drains.

That register, started a year ago, was scheduled to be completed last month, and should not only give the authorities numbers, but a daunting idea of the gullies and drains that need fixing.

According to Mayor McKenzie, the cleaning bill alone will run into millions of dollars. “Plus, there is no money set aside for the maintenance and repair of gullies,” he said.

McKenzie though, refusing to roll over and die, has asked the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) for help to repair the damaged gullies.

Rohan Bell, a social officer at the JSIF, confirmed the approach by the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC), but told the Sunday Observer that no decision had yet been made.

According to Bell, JSIF officials had accompanied KSAC personnel on a tour of the city’s gullies, as well as the May Pen Cemetery, for which the KSAC has so far raised $6 million of a targeted $40-million restoration bill.

The request for funding, Bell said, “is still under review”.

The JSIF is a temporary, autonomous government-sponsored institution established to address some of the most pressing socio-economic needs of the poorest.

It mobilises resources from the Government and donors, and channels them to small-scale, community-based social and economic infrastructure and social services projects.

A Sunday Observer tour of some of Kingston’s gullies found the following:

Cockburn Pen Gully – Black, red, yellow and white scandal bags, one containing dead fowls, among the litter, giving off a fetid smell that apparently attracted a large pig which rummaged for food. A shop owner who lives in Bell Rock, one of the communities in the area, said “people used to drive by and throw there, but we stop them”. He accused persons living at White Wing, another section of the community, of defecating and throwing dead dogs in the gully. He also said that the gully was last cleaned in 2000.

Greenwich Farm Gully – A pile of faeces and garbage sits in the gully which, residents said, hasn’t been cleaned in a year.

Red Hills Road Gully – The green, murky water is not free-flowing as the drain is clogged with debris.

Duhaney Park, Perkins and Grants Pen gullies – All choking with debris, including dry branches.

Ackee Walk Gully – The water that streams down this gully during a downpour is hidden by a dense blanket of mostly styrofoam and sun-bleached scandal bags.

Drew Gully – Majesty Gardens residents admit that this gully is the main toilet for their children, thereby contributing to the brown faeces-filled water trickling through the channel. Fresh and stale faeces compete vigorously with the smell from cloudy, green litter water flowing under a bridge. Pigs comb the gully banks for food. “Because of this, germs tek di pickney dem,” said a labourer and resident who gave his name only as “Flexers”.

Section of Tivoli Gully running across Marcus Garvey Drive – The scent of a decomposing dead dog discouraged detailed examination, but parts of the gully looked more like a swamp.

Newland Bridge Gully – This gully, which runs under Maxfield Avenue, is an exception. It is not litter-strewn. “It was cleaned last year,” explained a resident.

Mother White Gully – A pool of shallow, stagnant water breeds mosquitoes which, residents said, wreak havoc on their and their children’s skin. “The gully breeds rats, and mongoose,” complained one youth.

Another, who gave his name as Jeffery, said: “When I was small, three people used to sweep the gullies and no rubbish could go in there. But now, all that change.”

Shoemaker Gully – Like the Mother White Gully, parts of this drain’s base has collapsed and is threatening to take the houses perched on its banks down to the sea whenever it rains heavily again.

According to Mayor McKenzie, last hurricane season, the KSAC cleaned the Industrial Terrace, Nutmeg and Shoemaker gullies. He, however, admitted that this was insufficient since “all the gullies needed cleaning”.

Town Clerk Errol Greene agreed. However, he explained that while the KSAC attempted to clean the gullies before and during the hurricane season, the local government body is “forced to service only the strategic ones, since this activity is not budgeted for”.

The National Environment and Planning Agency’s public education officer, Zadie Neufville, pointed to the health risks associated with the garbage-filled gullies. “In cases where children play in the gullies, they may contract skin diseases such as ringworm and other fungus,” she warned.

Neufville also cautioned against dumping debris into gullies as they pose a problem to humans and marine life.

“Plastic objects and wires dumped by residents near and far float into the sea and are mistaken for food by turtles, which attempt to eat them and are killed,” she explained. She also said that tree trunks and other debris can damage boats.