St Elizabeth puts work into Labour Day
SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — True to the theme ‘Lend a Hand… Build Our Land’, a number St Elizabeth residents volunteered to improve their communities yesterday — Labour Day.
In some cases, residents simply cleaned and spruced up their homes and businesses.
The painting and partition of a classroom block at the St Mary’s All Age School at St Mary’s in the hills of Malvern was the official parish project. In the early afternoon, mayor of Black River and chairman of the St Elizabeth Parish Council, Everton Fisher, voiced satisfaction with the project.
“It has gone very well,” he told the Jamaica Observer by telephone. Fisher said volunteers from the parish council, the Alpart Community Council, the police and government agencies such as the Social Development Commission and the National Youth Service were among those doing improvement work at St Mary’s.
Fisher said that of 63 projects registered at the parish council for Labour Day, 75 per cent focused on schools.
Volunteers from Juici Patties painted sections of the Santa Cruz Primary and Junior High in Santa Cruz and the Kiwanis Club repainted pedestrian crossings. In the nearby Park Mountain District, VMBS staff painted the Park Mountain Primary School and planted flowers and other plants.
In Middle Quarters, staff of the electricity provider, Jamaica Public Service, painted the school building and replaced electrical wiring at the Lancewood Basic School.
Increasingly in recent years, residents in some communities have been pooling resources on Labour Day to patch pot-holed roads, and yesterday residents of Holt District and Beadle Boulevard in Santa Cruz were among those patching their roads.
May 23, Labour Day in Jamaica, traditionally commemorates the labour riots of 1938 generally recognised as the trigger for the modern trade union movement. However, in 1972, then newly elected Prime Minister Michael Manley added a new dimension, urging Jamaicans to put “work into labour day”. Manley’s initiative came as part of a drive to build volunteerism and the self-help ethic.
